In theater productions the actor speaks and moves in the imaginary environment of the stage, and so his or her powers of pretense must be sharply focused over an extended period of time or the entire dramatic atmosphere may collapse. Achieving a believable transformation into the character and entry into the play's circumstances requires a constant stream of inspiration from the actor's psyche. In many cultures, this ability to awaken the creative centers of the brain and achieve vibrant expression is the foundation of great acting. Only when the performer is properly stimulated internally can the spectator also be stirred deeply and propelled into the moment-by-moment reality of the play. The controlled production of emotions is the actor's special creative problem. Other artists-such as painters, sculptors, composers, or novelists-are not expected to complete a new masterpiece every night, or even every year; yet the working stage actor must perform creatively on command at an announced time and place before a live audience.
Or put another way, the performing artist is forced to inhabit a character even when he or she may feel no special inspiration or artistic impulse. And since theater performances are normally repeated over several evenings or months, actors, even when successful one night, must constantly replenish, or reinspire, themselves artistically. The performer's fear of losing certain psychic and physical energies-or growing stale in a role-has been articulated since the 1st century AD. The need to overcome this obstacle differentiates actor training from all other forms of artistic study. Aristotle undertook the first theoretical discussion of acting in the West in his Poetics . Actors in the classical Greek theater wore larger-than-life masks and heavy garments to represent mythological and historical characters. They communicated temperament and feeling primarily through speech and stylized gestures whose meaning was clear to spectators. Professional performers underwent a rigorous regimen of speech training and vocal exercise.
According to Aristotle, the human voice alone could register passion and delight. He also wrote that the most convincing portrayals of distress and anger, for example, were produced by performers who truthfully felt those emotions at the moment they expressed them. Finding the true feeling in the proper place and time on stage, however, was a problem that Aristotle addressed less well. He concluded that acting was an occupation for the gifted or insane. How to cross the artistic boundary beyond feigned emotions and flat imitation obsessed many Greek actors. In 315 BC the tragedian Polus carried the real ashes of his recently deceased son in an urn to stimulate a sense of genuine grief when he played the mythological character Electra mourning her dead brother Orestes.
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