As we begin to develop our technique we start with developing our Actor/Self--our instrument. Therefore our investigation begins with ourselves and how OUR instrument works. One of the key elements of investigation is the collection of information. So with acting how do we do this--where do we start? With our FIVE SENSES.
Developing an acute awareness of your senses is one of the first fundamentals of acting. This seems obvious I know but it bears repeating. And repeating again! If our job is to create a truthful fabrication of reality then we must discover truth within the details of REAL LIFE--and those details are revealed by our senses.
SO! In real life how we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the world is how we experience everything that is considered LIVING. All of the external information, or stimulation, is received and filtered through our senses. We are bombarded all day long with information. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are constantly storing up a massive catalogue of sensations in our memories. This collection is how we learn, recognize, and identify our reality. This is why most of our memories are accompanied by one or more remembered sensation. Bottom line is that our senses perceive our existence. Unfortunately, in our day to day life many of us take our senses for granted. Sometimes this is out of necessity and we are forced or choose to ignore certain sensual information so that we can function/cope with our reality. This may be good for real life but it's bad for our acting one. As we develop our Actor/Self we have to be more aware of how our senses work and what they sense. We need to become extremely observant! We need to be more aware of what we see. We need to learn to notice small details and the information those details can offer. We need to learn how to hear more than what is being said. We need to learn how to notice all the sounds that are constantly vibrating around us. We need to learn to articulate the effect these sounds have on our experience. We need to become aware of how important touch is and just as importantly--the absence of it. We need to learn to feel presences within our personal space and how we define that space. We need to learn how to notice that each person carries with them their own unique fragrance and that every place we go--every room we enter has its own particular smell. We even need to pay closer attention to the way food, or drink, or dirt, or blood, or sweat tastes. All our senses work together to create a fuller experience of reality and as an actor the more attention we can give to our senses the more fulfilled our Actor/Character experience will be.
Important to note here! Even if the Actor/Character has NOTHING in common with who WE--our Actor/Self--is we still draw all our INSPIRATION from our own PERSONAL store house of experience. BUT always remember--drawing inspiration from our experiences is not the same as MIRRORING our experiences.
In real life it is impossible to go through our experience without collecting memories. Some are easier than others to remember and some we try very hard to forget. But for an actor it is essential for our artistry to collect as many sensual memories as we can. We need be able to truthfully imagine whatever possible sensations the story and character may demand and our sense memories are the seeds from which our imaginations grow. I think it is very important to distinguish here that sense memory is not the same thing as emotional memory or affected memory. I will spend more time on emotional memory and my thoughts on the subject in a future post but for now--sense memory is simply memories associated with your five senses. For example, if the tasks demanded by the story require that you are standing on a beach at dusk basking in the sunset--but in reality you are standing on the edge of the proscenium looking out into a (hopefully) sold out audience...or perhaps you are working on a film that is being shot entirely with computer generated imaging and you are standing in the middle of an empty sound stage surrounded by green screen--then as an actor, you must be able to truthfully imagine and experience every detail of that vision before you. This is when you will draw inspiration from your memories. Perhaps directly from a beach sunset that you have experienced personally. You can recall the smell of salt from the ocean. You can recall the sound or the waves crashing on the beach as the tide rolls in. You can feel the cool evening breeze on your face and the soft sand--still warm from the afternoon sun--in your toes. Once these memories spark inspiration then your imagination takes over to assist in the full developed of the character's experience.
Now when we start out in acting most of our character's imagined and sensual experiences will be mirrored from those of our real life experiences. It's not preferred but it's inevitable. That sunset mentioned above will probably look and feel exactly like one we experienced as a child on a family vacation. This is how we define what a sensual experience IS by associating it with our own experience. However, I believe for your Actor/Self it is important to DISASSOCIATE your own personal sensual memories with the ones required of the character. Your Actor/Self sense memories should only be used as an inspiration for your character's experience. The trap we fall into is a SHORT CUT for truth but in the end it will always mislead you. The shortcut is so tempting BECAUSE of the personal connection that resonates from our OWN experience but the pitfall is when we interpret our experience as the character's truth. It's not. It has all the residual essence of OUR interpretation of that experience and not the character's. For instance, let's imagine you are playing an old "salty dog" sea captain who can't wait to get back out to sea. As you long to set sail you reminisce about your life out on the ocean. You recall the sights, the sounds, and the smells of sailing and fishing. Now what if in real life you have a bad memory associated with the salty smell of the sea or the fishy odor of low tide? You will clearly have no trouble filling your nostrils with the sensation of this odor but what additional memory baggage will YOUR sense memory evoke? Will this create an obstacle as you create a character that is asked by the story to be filled with vitality from that odor?
"I don't understand! How can you possible draw inspiration for your character FROM your own memories WITHOUT incorporating your experience into the characters?!? Isn't that what I bring to my interpretation!?"
When we take on a role WHO WE ARE is what gives our performance its uniqueness. Even if we were to give the same line readings as another actor our performance would STILL be unique to us. The way we sound, the way we look, the way we move, they way we see through the character's eyes will always be uniquely ours because no two humans are the same. This is incredibly liberating! And YES, who we are is all of our experience and history, memories and make up, however, bringing my own personal experiences into the character is only the beginning and can lead to artistic blockage if it is used improperly. Allowing your personal experience into the work may give you a deeper understanding for the character's needs but the difference is that you cannot assume your experience is that of the characters. What makes a performance INSPIRED is not only how YOU would react in the given circumstances but having the vulnerability and courage to let your experience transform beyond who you are to that of the character.
I believe the difficulty is that ALL of our sensual memories carry with them an emotional memory--which may not be appropriate for the character you are creating. Sometimes those are vivid emotional memories. Sometimes they are not. So what I suggest is that once you have identified a sensation you should store it as a "detached" sensation. A bright light is just a glare that causes your eyes to squint. A burn is just the pain of your skin being scalded. The smell of fresh cut grass is just a crisp clean aroma with a hint of bitter wild onion. All your sensual memories become independent "files" that can be uses for inspiration. They are like sound bites of sensation. I prefer to imagine a large storehouse with rows of shelves. On each shelf are mason jars containing one sense. It could be a fragrance. Maybe it's the smell of cinnamon? Maybe it's garlic? It could be an object. Maybe it's a piece of rabbit fur to touch? Maybe a swatch of silk to see shimmer and feel cool against my cheek? On other shelves are a collection of snap shots from sights that I have seen--either in person or from photographs in books or on the Internet. You can choose however you would like to organize your sensual memories but I believe it is important for your Actor/Self development that your memories are visualized abstractly. This way they are more accessible to the needs of the character.
When you take on a role you immediately start filling in that character's existence. You are literally building the character from scratch. As you create the world they live in within the story you are filling it with all of your sensual inspiration from your personal catalogue. As your Actor/Character's NEEDS become clearer and are established then your Actor/Self's imagination will give appropriate values to your sensory inventory. Now that they are connected to your Actor/Character's wants and needs the result will ignite your Actor/Character's emotional life to organically create truthful behavior and reactions.
I'm in no way suggesting that you shouldn't bring your personal experience to a role but I am suggesting that when you rely solely on your personal experience--and use your own memories directly (mirroring) for the character's wants and needs--then you immediately place limitations on your art and the depth your creation can go. It will be like fitting a pentagon peg in round hole. It looks like it will fit but it doesn't.
The bottom line is that everyone approaches the work differently but when it comes to character one rule is law. You must always bring yourself to the character and never the character to yourself.
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