Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Acting Coaches in Los Angeles- Being Vulnerable

By Kirk Baltz


When it comes to acting, great abilities cannot be formed overnight. 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 do this, actors are required to face themselves as they truly are, vulnerabilities and strengths alike, to uncover their true selves and create lifelike characters.

Every character that an actor creates is multi-dimensional as are the actors themselves. The three dimensions, in particular, that compose the human person are the tragic flaw, the public persona, and our ubiquitous lifelong insecurities and difficulties. An acting coach can not only help an actor uncover his own dimensions but can also aid him or her in using these traits to create dimensional and relatable characters.

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. Characters also have personas that they create to protect their true selves from the rest of the world and actors must learn to utilize their own personas to create those of their characters.

Although the public persona is the dimension that is the most easily recognizable and obvious in a character, it is only an exterior facade and not the core of the individual. The root of a person's character is grounded in their growth and development from childhood. 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.

Our childhood challenges and situations mold us as adults and remain with us for the duration of our lifetime. The same is true of created characters. Covering up these vulnerabilities under a shield of stability is our means of appearing strong rather than helpless to others.

The mark of a great actor is his or her ability to dig past both their own and their character's public persona to the actual person within. The best coaches will aid their students in both uncovering and portraying the inner workings of the human condition.

All persons in the audience, like the actor and the character, have both a personal core as well as a public persona they have created to protect it. Regardless of whether or not they are aware of this fact, creating a dimensional character will never fail to hit a chord with the watcher. The exceptional actor is one who is able to create such a character.




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