Thursday, June 21, 2012

Acting Classes Los Angeles- Lifelike Characters

By Kirk Baltz


True actors are not created in one day. Training with acting coaches or participation in acting classes can help actors to acquire much needed skills to aid them in improving in their craft. To reach this goal, an actor must delve into his soul and discover who he truly is as a person.

Each person and character alike is multi-faceted as opposed to being one-dimensional and static. These facets include the inherent insecurities and fears that are integral in forming our personalities, the persona that we adopt to conceal these vulnerabilities, as well as the tragic flaw. Working with an acting coach has been shown to be highly effective in helping an actor to see past his own exterior and that of his character to reveal the heart of the person within and create characters that are both real and relatable.

Carl Jung espoused the belief that the human person creates a public persona as a means of protecting his true self from others and conveying an image of strength and security as a means for survival. Expression of this persona occurs in all areas of our lives. Like real people, characters also have public personas making it necessary for acting classes to teach actors how to use themselves to develop these facades.

There is no question that an individual's vulnerabilities are often buried deep beneath the surface, making the public persona seem like the dominant characteristic. However, the true identity of a person dwells within the difficulties, insecurities, and vulnerabilities that inevitably work to form each individual. Acting classes are designed to instruct actors in identifying these difficulties in themselves so as to form multi-dimensional characters that audiences can relate to on a personal level.

These difficulties from our childhood remain with us to adulthood and shape the persona that we create to protect ourselves. The same is true of created characters. Both actual persons and characters use this public persona to cover up their insecurities and fears so as to reduce their helplessness in the world.

In order to become an exceptional actor, a student must learn to remove the superficial exterior of both his and his character's public persona in order to uncover the true self. The best coach will work with student actors in order to help them to remove the mask that they have spent a lifetime building.

Every audience member, whether he knows it or not, has both a deeper identity based in past life situations and issues as well as public persona that he has created to combat these weaknesses. Although many audience members may not be aware of the fact, creating multi-faceted characters is guaranteed to form a relationship between viewer and character. All great actors must learn to succeed in this form of character creation.




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