Theatre: Art in Action

Chapter 4: Acting

Overview

Acting is an art form that requires the actor to tap into all of his or her physical, intellectual, and emotional resources. In order to play a character well, one needs to make salient observations, draw on personal experience, exercise imagination, and analyze subtext. To become one's character, one should tap into sense memory, or recollections of tastes, smells, sights, textures, and sounds, and emotional memory, or recollections of one's own emotions.

An actor needs to give his or her character a motivation, or clear reason to do or say anything, and an objective, or goal, to better understand and become the character. Actors need to decide how their characters speak and move, what their facial expressions are, and what gestures they use. An actor needs to learn how to maintain focus and poise and how to stay open—visible—to an audience while on stage. An actor going on an audition needs to bring a résumé and be as prepared as possible to read a monologue or a scripted part.