Acting Part 3--A More Real Sense than Literally

      The difference I propose is simply a matter of perspective, but it is a perspective that must be kept throughout a show. Many acting instructors teach that the art has been ruined and possibly lost if the actor does not bring his or her own personality into the character's equation. In other words, if you play Hamlet, your experiences, emotional recall, and objectives should create and entirely different character than if I were to play Hamlet. Trying to actually become the character is false. I argue that the only difference between your playing the character and mine is that our experiences will cause us to see different things in the character. Your experiences might cause the character's initial inactivity to be caused by his Oedipal complex where he can hardly blame Claudius for what he, himself, secretly wishes to do. I believe the character is simply confused by what truth he can possibly decipher no matter how "noble in reason" man is. Regardless, when we start to play the character, our decisions and motivations rely, not so much on our own experiences but on the character's experiences, many of which we have made up.
      Good acting, then, means that we have so fully created experiences and imbedded those experiences in our performance that the character is as real as what we would consider our "real" personalities. The art of acting, then, is not converging our personality with the character's but in throwing off our personality, taking ourselves out of the center of the universe (as an acting instructor once told me), and creating a character as real as we are. We have to acknowledge the things that created what we consider the "real person" we think we are-experience, heredity, illusion, philosophy. We also have to consider the way these things evolve, changing themselves and each other as we grow. Then, we use these things to create the character.

Personal Example
      I recently played Capitano in the commedia-light play A Company of Wayward Saints. In the final scene, a priest, played by the Arlechinno of the company, visits Capitano. The priest is imprisoned and is about to be executed. He wants to convince Capitano to take his place as a priest, which is obviously absurd. Of course, the Capitano is ultimately convinced. My challenge was that I could see nothing in the lines that could cause such a turn around for the Capitano, even when the priest pulls in Capitano's nostalgia for his hometown.

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