Aristotle’s Acting Technique: A blog outlining Aristotle’s Acting Technique.
Aristotle’s Acting Technique: A blog outlining Aristotle’s Acting Technique.
Is there such a thing as the perfect acting technique?
At the moment, in the UK there is a TV show called ‘Superstars of Dance’ where professionals from all over the world compete against each other, representing their country and dance technique. Each team is made up of dancers from the same style, who have been coached by one choreographer to perform a set routine. The judges then score each group on their performance to determine which is the best team.
What would happen if we took the same idea and applied it to theatre? What would be the outcome if we had groups of actors, trained by different acting gurus, performing scenes in front of an audience and a panel of judges? Would Stanislavski win over Chekhov? Would Meisner come out on top or Strasberg or even Brecht?
Maybe that competition has already happened and we just don’t know about it? If it hasn’t happened yet, maybe it should?
One thing I do know for sure though is that none of those acting techniques
Aristotle’s Acting Technique: A blog outlining Aristotle’s Acting Technique.
Aristotle’s Acting Technique:
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist, who lived from 384 to 322 B.C. He is referred to as the “Father of Western Philosophy.” He is most famous for his book, Nicomachean Ethics, which is a philosophical study on ethics.
One of his other works, “Poetics,” was a study of dramatic theory, based on the structure and development of tragedy and comedy. In this work, he gives a very detailed analysis of the elements necessary to produce effective drama. One of his conclusions was that actors should exhibit anger (or one of the other passions) in such a way that they do not seem to be acting. He believed that the best actors were capable of making the audience experience an emotion that was intense enough to cause them to shed tears or be moved by some other strong passion. This idea is known as catharsis, which has remained in use today by many actors and directors.
He believed that all drama should have six essential elements: Plot, Character, Thought, Diction (Language), Music (Sound) and Spectacle (Visual Effects). Aristotle had no way of knowing
Aristotle’s Acting Technique
This is a blog outlining Aristotle’s acting technique. There are a few different variations of this technique, and as such, I have chosen to use the one outlined in Mizener’s book The Fictional Technique of Scott Fitzgerald.
The main idea behind Aristotle’s acting technique is that the actor should be able to imitate all emotions in such a way that they can be understood by an audience. There are three main components to this:
1. The Actor’s Technique
2. The Audience
3. The Playwright
The Actor’s Technique
“The first thing an actor has to do, then, is to develop his own technique for expressing emotion so that it will come over as clearly as possible.” (Mizener 20) This involves learning how to express all of the emotions that you will need for whatever role you are playing, and finding your own way of expressing those specific emotions. Each person has their own way of expressing their feelings; for example, some people cry when they are sad, while others shut down, or lash out at others. The important thing is to learn how to control your emotions so that you can express them convincingly on stage or in front of a camera. “He has,
Aristotle’s Acting Technique
There are many acting techniques that actors use today. Some of the acting techniques are more popular than others, and some of them are used more by certain types of actors than others. For instance, there are techniques that are used heavily by film and television actors, and there are techniques that focus on methods more suited to live theater. One acting technique that has become more popular in recent years is called The Method (I am writing a series on The Method in this blog). There are also acting techniques such as Meisner and Uta Hagen and Stanslavsky and Michael Chekhov that have been around for decades. If you want to be an actor, you should study at least one of these acting techniques in depth.
On the other hand, there is an acting technique that has been around for thousands of years, but has fallen out of fashion in recent history: Aristotle’s Acting Technique. I am going to write about Aristotle’s Acting Technique over the next few days.
Before I begin discussing Aristotle’s Acting Technique directly, I want to take a moment to talk about why this technique has fallen out of favor among both actors and playwrights in the last several hundred years; I
There are many acting techniques and methods. For the purposes of this blog, we will be focusing on Aristotle’s Acting Technique. The technique was created by Constantine Stanislavski in the late 19th century and later adapted by Lee Strasberg in America to become what is known as Method Acting.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist who lived from 384BC to 322BC. He is one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He sought to understand the world through reason and logic versus myth, which was dominant at the time. He believed that life should reflect art and that art should reflect life.
One of his great works ‘The Poetics’ outlines his theory for tragedy. His theory for tragedy can be applied to acting, or any art form for that matter, because he believed that ‘all art is an imitation of life’ (Aristotle). If we look at this quote closely it gives us a clue as to how Aristotle would have thought about acting. The actor is imitating life; therefore, the actor needs to connect with their own experience in order to create a truthful performance. This performance should evoke emotion in audience members so they can connect with the story being told.
Aristotle’s Acting Technique
I have been reading and rereading Aristotle’s Poetics, since I find I can never properly understand it in one sitting.
Aristotle is interested in the drama of his day. He talks about plot, character and spectacle, or the music and dance that was part of the Greek plays. He believes that a great tragedy is the greatest form of art, because it creates pity and fear, which purge us of our emotions, and make us better people.
Aristotle has much to say on the subject of plot: how long a play should be; how to structure a play; what types of plots there are. He also talks about character, and how characters must be good or bad. They cannot be in between.
But his most interesting advice is given in Chapter 5 of Book 6, on acting technique.
He says that it is not enough for actors to remember their lines and marks, to deliver them in tempo with the right intonation. In order to be a good actor, you must have mastery of three things: memory (remembering your lines), imagination (understanding what you are saying) and speech (delivering it correctly).
On Memory: remember your lines well so as not
You might think that acting is about being someone else, but in fact it’s about being yourself. You’re just being the most successful, most interesting, most powerful version of yourself possible. When you act well, you are tapping into who you are and drawing that out for the audience to see. You can use any technique to get there, but I have found Aristotle’s Technique to be extremely helpful.
All good acting begins with an understanding of what you want: what do you want to happen in the scene? What do you want from the other characters? What do you have to do to get what you want? Once you know what your goal is, then acting becomes a matter of figuring out how to achieve that goal. The moment-to-moment action of the scene becomes a series of choices: what will convince this person to give me what I want?
It’s helpful during this process to explain your choices out loud. Why did you pick that particular word? Why did you throw that glance? If it makes sense when spoken aloud, it will probably work on stage as well. Acting is about making choices and then justifying them.
