Aesthetics

What is "fine" acting?  

Well like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder.  As much as I would all like to say with conviction that there is a definitive line between good and bad it just isn't so.  We all have an opinion of what we think is good and it all comes down to aesthetics.  Time to run to Webster again...

"Aesthetics: a particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight."

Due to the work of Stanislavsky and then The Group Theatre/The Actor's Studio here in America, the most popular aesthetic is some form of psychological realism or naturalism.  Audiences have come to expect their actors to appear as real as they are.  I mean look at our culture's obsession with "reality" television!  We want to see truthful emotion and true relationships.  It has to "feel" real!   And as actors we aspire to "be" real.  As a result, a number of "methods" or "systems" have developed over the last hundred years to produce believable performances.  Some of them focus so much on reality that actors are convinced they cannot truly BE the character until they have EXPERIENCED everything the character has experienced.  I do not subscribe to this idea.  First and foremost acting isn't real.  Let me say this again.  ACTING IS NOT REALITY.  For an actor everything that takes place on stage or in front of the camera is fictional.  More importantly--characters aren't real people.  They are a semblance of human beings.  They are not complex.  Characters exist in a story to serve a purpose within that story.  They are functional.  Even if they are based on real life or historical persons they are still just characters in a story.  They are something that we create--NOT something that we live.  Through our creation the audience has an experience.  We do not act the experience.  We act the action.  Then what becomes most important is that whenever we act our actions are TRUTHFUL. 

Therefore my aesthetics are those of Transformational Acting.  

I was very inspired by Declan Donnellan's book The Actor and the Target but in it he disputes transformational acting as flat out impossible.  He states, and rightly so, that there is no way for an actor to physically transform into another being.  It is true.  We do not live in an age where we can step into a shiny metal pod with flashing lights--flip a switch and BAM!  After a little molecular reconstruction we step out as Macbeth.  What we can do is take all of our experience, imagination, intelligence, creativity, and focus and then mold them--like clay--into something new.  We transform ourselves, as raw material, into our own unique interpretation of a character never seen before.  

We transform INTO the character or the "Who am I"--NOT the other way around.  

You know I recently overheard a summer blockbuster actor (who's co-stars are giant robots) say in an interview that the director was constantly encouraging the actors to ad lib and improvise which created an exciting organic experience.  Well what this actually says to me is one of two things.  One, it's possible that the dialogue was poorly written and the director clearly had no respect for the material and in the end it was irrelevant or two, the actors were incapable of delivering the written lines truthfully because they were unable to transform their own personalities to the wants and needs of the character.  Either way the result is "personality acting."  Where the actor conforms each role to their own character traits.  You always see the same tricks.  But when you transform to the character you set aside your habits and choices for the discovery of those in service to the character.  Despite the consistencies that exist within you as an actor--a new character is created out of your individuality.  In my opinion, transformation is a successful aesthetic for every style and genre of acting.  As long as TRUTHFUL transformation and TRUTHFUL action is committed to, then the audience will TRULY have an experience.  

That is what I consider "fine" acting.  When truth happens.