An Actor Prepares : Chapter Three

"On the stage it is necessary to act, either outwardly or inwardly." All action in the theatre must have an inner justification, be logical, coherent and real.

The external immobility of a person sitting on the stage does not imply passiveness. You may sit without a motion and at the same time be in full action. Frequently physical immobility is the direct result of inner intensity, and it is these inner activities that are far more important artistically. The essence of art is not in its external forms but in its spiritual content.

On the stage, there cannot be, under any circumstances, action which is directed immediately at the rousing of a feeling for its own sake. To ignore this rule results only in the most disgusting artificiality. When you are choosing some bits of action leave feeling and spirited content alone. Never seek to be jealous, or to make love, or to suffer, for its won sake. All such feelings are the result of something that has gone before. As for the result, it will produce itself. You must not copy passions or copy types. You must live in passions and in the types. Your acting of them must grow out of your living in them.

if acts as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination. The secret of the effect of if lies first of all in the fact that it does not use fear or force, or make the artist do anything. On the contrary, it reassures him through its honesty, and encourages him to have confidence in a supposed situation. It arouses an inner and real activity.  if is also a stimulus to the creative subconscious. One fundamental principle of acting is "unconscious creativeness through conscious technique".

To achieve this kinship between the actor and the person he is portraying add some concrete detail which will fill out the play, giving it point and absorbing action. The circumstances which are predicted on if are taken from sources near to your own feelings, and they have a powerful influence on the inner life of an actor. Once you have established this contact between your life and your part, you will find that inner push or stimulus. Add a whole series of contingencies based on your own experience in life, and you will see how easy it will be for you sincerely to believe in the possibility of what you are called upon to do on the stage. Work out an entire role in this fashion, and you will create a whole new life.

Pushkin said, "Sincerity of emotions, feelings that seem true in given circumstances - that is what we ask of a dramatist." 

'given circumstances' mean the story of the play, its facts, events, epoch, time and place of action, conditions of life, the actors' and the regisseur's interpretation, the mise-en-scene, the production, the sets, the costumes, properties, lighting and sound effects, - all the circumstances that are given to an actor to take into account as he creates his role. If is the starting point, the given circumstances, the development.

'sincerity of emotions' means living human emotions, feelings which the actor himself has experienced.

'feelings that seem true' refers not to the actual feelings but to something nearly akin to them, to emotions reproduced indirectly, under the prompting of true inner feelings.

First, you will have to imagine in your own way the 'given circumstances' offered by the play, the regisseur's production and your own artistic conception. All of this material will provide a general outline for the life of the character you are to enact, and the circumstances surrounding him. it is necessary that you really believe in the general possibilities of such a life, and then become so accustomed to it that you feel yourself close to it. If you are successful in this, you will find that 'sincere emotions', or 'feelings that seem true' will spontaneously grow in you.