The Acting Blog

Assistance with Repetition

The Repetition Exercise is one of my favourite parts of actor training and in my classes we spend a considerable amount of time attaining high skill levels in this exercise at all levels of the ACS training syllabus.  I’ve been reading a lot about emotions this weekend, and whilst we do not try to fake emotions, we do try to be able to determine the behaviour and emotions of our partners.  I’m sorry, this is probably not much fun for anyone that isn’t already taking classes or doing repetition elsewhere, but it’s fairly essential reading for my students.

The trouble is that among experts there is very little consensus on the actual basic emotions that the human being feels and therefore exhibits:

The Stoics believed there only a few basic emotions:  Pleasure or Delight, Distress or Fear. (Can you tell when your partner is in one of these four basic states?)

In 1972, a now famous psychologist called Paul Ekman (he pioneered the reading of micro-expressions and emotions and a character based on him is in the TV show Lie to Me) came up with his own list of the basic emotions namely: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness and Surprise.

Now these are useful, but they don’t quite complete the full range of basic emotions, so in 1999 Ekman revised his list and came up with:

Amusement, Anger, Contempt, Contentment, Disgust, Embarrassment, Excitement, Fear, Guilt, Pride in Achievement, Relief, Sadness/Distress, Satisfaction, Sensory Pleasure and Shame.

This is very helpful for those of us staring at someone’s face (don’t forget it’s their body language and their tone too, this is just ONE facet of Repetition)

So Jesse Prinz was dissatisfied with these and came up with some of his own, Prinz is a philosopher, working in the field of emotions and the philosophy of psychology.  Here’s Jesse Prinz’s list:

Frustration, Panic, Anxiety, Physical Disgust, Distress, Self-Consciousness, Satisfaction, Stimulation and Attachment.

Now again, not all of these work for repetition, but they’re good to consider.

Now the reason that I’m highlighting these for you, is to get you to become better and more specific at naming what you see.  Think of it in terms of the stoics, then in terms of Ekman in ‘72 and Ekman in 99, then widen your thoughts on emotion to Prinz in 2004.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2009

Tweet me

Tags: Acting Emotions, Emotions and the Actor, The Repetition Exercise

The Actor and the Spontaneous Impulse Part 1

Okay, I’ll hold my hands up, I’m a little obsessed with Repetition.  As my students improve, you see them starting to have fun with it, succeed, fail, fuck it up and start all over again.  I can’t help myself, I could watch them doing Repetition til the cows come home.  In today’s blog, I’ve decided to take a little more time to discuss the Repetition Exercise, or simply ‘Repetition’ as we call it, and spend some time thinking about it.

Repetition is about learning to follow your impulses.  We’re bombarded by them 24/7, but we have been socially schooled to ignore most of them.  The trouble is that when we learn to ignore our impulses, we don’t choose between the good and bad impulses, between the polite and rude impulses, between the creative and the destructive impulses.  When we learn to turn off our impulses, we turn them all off.  When we need to open them up, we really need to switch off our social schooled straight jacket for spontaneity and impulses.

One of my favourite moments in repetition is when people begin to laugh.  Not a laugh which is a tactic to cover a ‘playing for time’ moment, but instead, a laugh that comes from the game, from deep within, from embarrassment, from the ridiculous situation of the game, but it comes from within.  But we’re not allowed to laugh ‘in school’, so most people try to kill it.  That’s insane.  Laughter is healthy, natural, a release of tension and a perfect example of the spontaneous impulse.

All good acting is impulsive. All good acting is based on spontaneous impulse. All good acting is essentially improvisational in nature. We should respond to the truth of the moment and repetition helps us to do this without the editor in our heads getting in the way and trying to be ‘nice’.

Whether we’re living, acting or doing repetition, we feel impulses all the time. An impulse is a reaction, often an emotion response to something that has a significant momentary or long term meaning to you. The emotion start sparks the impulse does not need to major, it can be tiny, but it causes some kind of psychophysical response in the actor. Some impulses do not cause a strong physical reaction, but the stronger the impulse, the stronger the physical action associated with it. We must learn to untether ourselves and allow ourselves to experience our impulses without getting in our own way.

Acting is about being human, not pretending to be characters. We need to forget that we’re acting and start living truthfully on stage or in front of the camera. Through practice, you can help the actor to forget that they’re acting and respond naturally, just as they do in real life. In fact, the line between acting and real life blurs.

To You, The Best!

Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2009

Tweet me

Tags: acting and spontaneity, acting on impulse, improvisational acting, The Repetition Exercise