The Acting Blog

Getting into Character is Being in ‘Flow’.

In my previous blog article on Getting into Character, I spoke of the feeling of being in character being generated from the repetition of psychophysiological actions.    This feeling that we experience is described as ‘being in character’. It’s when we feel connected to the role and completely in the moment.

Since reading Sharon Marie Carnicke’s book Stanislavsky in Focus, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of ‘flow’.  My own research leads me to connect the sense of an actor feeling ‘in character’ to actually being ‘in flow’.

Wikipedia, the great source of all net-savvy knowledge describes ‘Flow’ as ‘the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus.’   This idea was proposed and explore by the now highly regarded psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  Click to view his TED talk on FLOW.

Within many fields, we seem the sense of flow repeated represented by different terms such as ‘in the zone’, ‘on the ball’ and for actors, let’s add one more ‘in character’.

There are 7 conditions that are present with an individual experiencing ‘flow’.  These seem to be present regardless of cultural or educational differences.

(This taken directly from Csikszentmihalyi’s TED presentation)

CONDITION 1: Completely involved what they are doing –focused, concentrated.

CONDITION 2: A sense of ecstasy (being outside of everyday reality).

CONDITION 3: Great inner clarity, knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing it.

CONDITION 4: Knowing that the activity is doable and that I have skills that are adequate to the task.

CONDITION 5: A sense of serenity, no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.

CONDITION 6: Timelessness, thoroughly in the present time (what we call ‘being in the moment’).

CONDITION 7: Intrinsic Motivation – whatever produces the flow becomes its own reward.

All of these conditions chime with me.  As you work your way through, I think that you will recognise yourself, and those moments when you felt that you were ‘in character’.  These are times when you felt at one with the character, well, you weren’t, the character isn’t real, you are real, and you were mid-Flow.

I’m going to blog quite a bit about Flow in the coming weeks, so if you’re interested, stick around.  I’m really seeing the relationship between Flow and Creativity and Flow and the teaching (and therefore) the learning of acting.

Click the link if you wish to get a copy of Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow.

Best Wishes

Mark Westbrook

Acting Coach Scotland.

Tags: Being in Character, Flow, Getting into Character, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus

A Great Book on Stanislavsky or if you like Stanislavski

If you’re a Stanislavski Geek like me, and you’ve read everything written about him in the English language, you’ll love Stanislavky in Focus. The second edition of Sharon Marie Carnicke’s book.  Her care and attention, as well as her experience as a Russian speaker and a professional actor and director mark this book out for special attention.

Carnicke knows her stuff, she really goes at this with 100% and I’ve loved reading it, furthering my knowledge, filling in gaps and reassuring myself of things I thought I knew.  But there’s a small problem, in a couple of sections, I’m being asked to take Carnicke’s word that she’s able to read between the lines of the Russian texts (things I’m clearly never going to read) in order to glean the REAL meaning.  Okay, I used to be an academic, I know that the reading between the lines is not a robust way to make a conclusion about anything.  I know Carnicke is highly experienced, I utterly respect her, wish I could do my PhD with her, but I’m concerned about this reading between the lines business, it doesn’t smack of the same authenticity as the rest of the book.  Still you should buy the book, it’s a great read, but don’t expect a practical guide, this is Stan Geekery at our best.

Carnicke’s short rebuttal of Mamet’s views on Stanislavski leads me to believe more than ever W H Macy’s claim that Practical Aesthetics is ‘the next generation of Stanislavsky’.  Rather than persuading me that Mamet is wrong (sorry NAME DELETED), it’s convinced me that Mamet is much closer to a stripped bare version of Stanislavski.  Anyway, let’s not get that into debate, the book (and many of my own critics) offers a perspective quite close to ‘if Mamet knew what ‘I’ knew about Stanislavski, he would realise that he’s wrong.  Well, okay, that’s possible.  HOWEVER, and this is a MASSIVE however, the Stanislavski that Mamet knows, that almost EVERYONE in the world knows is NOT the Stanislavski that Carnicke knows, the poorly translated, Method, US-biased books, the censored USSR version, – instead, the Stanislavski that we all know is the Stanislavski that anyone had a chance to know.  Strasberg and Meisner didn’t meet Stanislavski in person.  They were never taught by him.  None of us were.  None of us have had a chance to get to know the ‘real’ Stanislavski until Carnicke’s book.   After my reading of the book, I’m more convinced than ever that Practical Aesthetics is the convertible edition of Stanislavski’s work, stripped back, essential and fun.  If you want to do other stuff on top of PA, that’s fine by me, whatever floats your boat.

Buy this book if you’re interested in the history of the development of Stanislavski’s system and the Method.  I’m waiting til the Whyman book goes paperback before I buy it, but apparently according to NAME DELETED it’s going to show me how wrong I am and how wrong Mamet is and well, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it showed that Lee Strasberg was actually Stanislavski, because each of us reads these texts, picking up the parts that strengthen our individual argument and ignoring those that don’t.

An example of this comes in Carnicke’s book, she talks about university programmes teaching Stanislavski and she speaks about ART, the American Repertory Theatre and Brustein and the relationship with Harvard Institute of Advanced Theater Training. The MFA Acting students go to Russia, they learn Stanislavski there etc etc.  Yet, she fails to mention that this highly regarded course begins with… an intensive training in Practical Aesthetics from Scott Zigler (warning GRUMPY photo), one of the authors of A Practical Handbook for the Actor and Director of the Institute.  Is this Carnicke making a mistake, or avoiding muddying her reader’s perspective with ART/Institute’s condoning Practical Aesthetics?  I don’t know, I hope she reads the blog some day and tells me!

Mark Westbrook is a professional actor trainer and acting coach in Glasgow, Scotland and according to most of his critics is uneducated, under-trained poorly trained, wrongly trained, badly trained, badly misinformed, misdirected, deluded, eluded, avoided and persuaded.  Read here what his students think.

Tags: David Mamet, Harvard Institute of Advanced Theater Training, Practical Aesthetics, Scott Zigler, Sharon Marie Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus