Monday, May 28, 2012

Acting Coaches in Los Angeles- Being Vulnerable

By Kirk Baltz


When it comes to acting, great abilities cannot be formed overnight. Training with acting coaches or participation in acting classes can help actors to acquire much needed skills to aid them in improving in their craft. To do this, actors are required to face themselves as they truly are, vulnerabilities and strengths alike, to uncover their true selves and create lifelike characters.

Each person and character alike is multi-faceted as opposed to being one-dimensional and static. These facets include the inherent insecurities and fears that are integral in forming our personalities, the persona that we adopt to conceal these vulnerabilities, as well as the tragic flaw. Working with an acting coach has been shown to be highly effective in helping an actor to see past his own exterior and that of his character to reveal the heart of the person within and create characters that are both real and relatable.

Our public persona, according to Carl Jung, is the image that we present to the rest of society and is designed to mask our true feelings, emotions, and insecurities. This created persona presents itself in numerous ways throughout our lives. Similar to actual persons, characters develop public personas that must be unraveled and good acting workshops are designed to teach students how to accomplish just this.

It is not uncommon for public personas to be initially viewed as an individual's true identity as many are highly skilled in using this creation to mask their deeper selves. The root of a person's character is grounded in their growth and development from childhood. Acting classes are designed to instruct actors in identifying these difficulties in themselves so as to form multi-dimensional characters that audiences can relate to on a personal level.

Our childhood challenges and situations mold us as adults and remain with us for the duration of our lifetime. Both actors and the characters they create form their public personas as a means of defending themselves from these insecurities. Both actual persons and characters use this public persona to cover up their insecurities and fears so as to reduce their helplessness in the world.

The mark of a great actor is his or her ability to dig past both their own and their character's public persona to the actual person within. This is key to producing real characters for the audience.

All persons in the audience, like the actor and the character, have both a personal core as well as a public persona they have created to protect it. Regardless of whether or not they are aware of this fact, creating a dimensional character will never fail to hit a chord with the watcher. All great actors must learn to succeed in this form of character creation.




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