Friday, June 29, 2012

Acting Workshops Los Angeles- Childhood Fears

By Kirk Baltz


When it comes to acting, great abilities cannot be formed overnight. It is only through rigorous study and training that actors can reach their goals. 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.

Both human persons and created characters share a multi-dimensionality and depth. 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. Characters also have personas that they create to protect their true selves from the rest of the world and actors must learn to utilize their own personas to create those of their characters.

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 coaches are trained to teach actors to come face to face with their own childhood fears and issues in order to create a truly believable character with great depth and dimension.

That which affects us in childhood remains a part of our lives until the day we die, whether we allow it to surface or not. The same is true of created characters. Characters and real persons alike adopt public personas as a means of shielding their weaknesses and helplessness from 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. The best coaches will aid their students in both uncovering and portraying the inner workings of the human condition.

Every audience member, whether he knows it or not, has both a deeper identity based in past life situations and issues as well as public persona that he has created to combat these weaknesses. 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. Being able to create characters such as these is what separates the average actor from the exceptional.




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