Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Acting Workshops Los Angeles- Facing Vulnerabilities

By Kirk Baltz


True actors are not created in one day. Instead, significant effort and training are required to form an individual skilled in his or her craft. One of the most necessary and yet difficult components of great acting is learning to rip past the facade that covers the actors themselves and the characters they create to reveal the true identities within.

Each person and character alike is multi-faceted as opposed to being one-dimensional and static. The three dimensions, in particular, that compose the human person are the tragic flaw, the public persona, and our ubiquitous lifelong insecurities and difficulties. Training with an acting coach can both aid the actor in discovering these dimensions in himself as well as allow him to utilize these personal traits to create very real characters.

Carl Jung espoused the belief that the human person creates a public persona as a means of protecting his true self from others and conveying an image of strength and security as a means for survival. Expression of this persona occurs in all areas of our lives. Like real people, characters also have public personas making it necessary for acting classes to teach actors how to use themselves to develop these facades.

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.

These difficulties from our childhood remain with us to adulthood and shape the persona that we create to protect ourselves. The same is true of created characters. Covering up these vulnerabilities under a shield of stability is our means of appearing strong rather than helpless to others.

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. The best coach will work with student actors in order to help them to remove the mask that they have spent a lifetime building.

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. Although many audience members may not be aware of the fact, creating multi-faceted characters is guaranteed to form a relationship between viewer and character. All great actors must learn to succeed in this form of character creation.




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