Acting

Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or

actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium
that makes use of the mimetic mode.
Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-
developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity
of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to
employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage
combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these
skills. The vast majority of professional actors have undergone extensive training.
Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of
training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera.
Most early sources in the West that examine the art of acting
(Greek: ὑπόκρισις, hypokrisis) discuss it as part of rhetoric.

History
One of the first known actors was an ancient Greek called Thespis of Icaria. Writing
two centuries after the event, Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE) suggests that
Thespis stepped out of the dithyrambic chorus and addressed it as a
separate character. Before Thespis, the chorus narrated (for example, "Dionysus did
this, Dionysus said that"). When Thespis stepped out from the chorus, he spoke as if
he was the character (for example, "I am Dionysus, I did this"). To distinguish between
these different modes of storytelling—enactment and narration—Aristotle uses the
terms "mimesis" (via enactment) and "diegesis" (via narration). From Thespis' name
derives the word "thespian".

Training
Conservatories and drama schools typically offer two- to four-year training on all
aspects of acting. Universities mostly offer three- to four-year programs, in which a
student is often able to choose to focus on acting, whilst continuing to learn about other
aspects of theatre. Schools vary in their approach, but in North America the most
popular method taught derives from the 'system' of Konstantin Stanislavski, which was
developed and popularised in America as method acting by Lee Strasberg, Stella
Adler, Sanford Meisner, and others.
Other approaches may include a more physically based orientation, such as that
promoted by theatre practitioners as diverse as Anne Bogart, Jacques Lecoq, Jerzy
Grotowski, or Vsevolod Meyerhold. Classes may also
include psychotechnique, mask work, physical theatre, improvisation, and acting for
camera.
Regardless of a school's approach, students should expect intensive training in textual
interpretation, voice, and movement. Applications to drama programmes and
conservatories usually involve extensive auditions. Anybody over the age of 18 can
usually apply. Training may also start at a very young age. Acting classes and
professional schools targeted at under-18s are widespread. These classes introduce
young actors to different aspects of acting and theatre, including scene study.
Increased training and exposure to public speaking allows humans to maintain calmer
and more relaxed physiologically. By measuring a public speaker's heart rate maybe
one of the easiest ways to judge shifts in stress as the heart rate increases
with anxiety . As actors increase performances, heart rate and other evidence of stress
can decrease. This is very important in training for actors, as adaptive strategies gained
from increased exposure to public speaking can regulate implicit and explicit
anxiety. By attending an institution with a specialization in acting, increased opportunity
to act will lead to more relaxed physiology and decrease in stress and its effects on the
body. These effects can vary from hormonal to cognitive health that can impact quality
of life and performance

Improvisation
Some classical forms of acting involve a substantial element
of improvised performance. Most notable is its use by the troupes of the commedia
dell'arte, a form of masked comedy that originated in Italy.
Improvisation as an approach to acting formed an important part of the Russian theatre
practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski's 'system' of actor training, which he developed
from the 1910s onwards. Late in 1910, the playwright Maxim Gorky invited Stanislavski
to join him in Capri, where they discussed training and Stanislavski's emerging
"grammar" of acting. Inspired by a popular theatre performance in Naples that utilised
the techniques of the commedia dell'arte, Gorky suggested that they form a company,
modelled on the medieval strolling players, in which a playwright and group of young
actors would devise new plays together by means of improvisation. Stanislavski would
develop this use of improvisation in his work with his First Studio of the Moscow Art
Theatre.[8] Stanislavski's use was extended further in the approaches to acting
developed by his students, Michael Chekhov and Maria Knebel.
In the United Kingdom, the use of improvisation was pioneered by Joan Littlewood from
the 1930s onwards and, later, by Keith Johnstone and Clive Barker. In the United
States, it was promoted by Viola Spolin, after working with Neva Boyd at a Hull House
in Chicago, Illinois (Spolin was Boyd's student from 1924 to 1927). Like the British
practitioners, Spolin felt that playing games was a useful means of training actors and
helped to improve an actor's performance. With improvisation, she argued, people may
find expressive freedom, since they do not know how an improvised situation will turn
out. Improvisation demands an open mind in order to maintain spontaneity, rather than
pre-planning a response. A character is created by the actor, often without reference to
a dramatic text, and a drama is developed out of the spontaneous interactions with
other actors. This approach to creating new drama has been developed most
substantially by the British filmmaker Mike Leigh, in films such as Secrets &
Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004), Another Year (2010), and Mr. Turner (2014).
Improvisation is also used to cover up if an actor or actress makes a mistake.

Physiological effects
Speaking or acting in front of an audience is a stressful situation, which causes an
increased heart rate.
In a 2017 study on American university students, actors of various experience levels all
showed similarly elevated heart rates throughout their performances; this agrees with
previous studies on professional and amateur actors' heart rates. While all actors
experienced stress, causing elevated heart rate, the more experienced actors
displayed less heart rate variability than the less experienced actors in the same play.
The more experienced actors experienced less stress while performing, and therefore
had a smaller degree of variability than the less experienced, more stressed actors.
The more experienced an actor is, the more stable their heart rate will be while
performing, but will still experience elevated heart rates.

Semiotics

The semiotics of acting involves a study of the ways in which aspects of a performance
come to operate for its audience as signs. This process largely involves the production
of meaning, whereby elements of an actor's performance acquire significance, both
within the broader context of the dramatic action and in the relations each establishes
with the real world.
Following the ideas proposed by the Surrealist theorist Antonin Artaud, however, it may
also be possible to understand communication with an audience that occurs 'beneath'
significance and meaning (which the semiotician Félix Guattari described as a process
involving the transmission of "a-signifying signs"). In his The Theatre and its
Double (1938), Artaud compared this interaction to the way in which a snake
charmer communicates with a snake, a process which he identified as "mimesis"—the
same term that Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE) used to describe the mode in
which drama communicates its story, by virtue of its embodiment by the actor enacting
it, as distinct from "diegesis", or the way in which a narrator may describe it. These
"vibrations" passing from the actor to the audience may not necessarily precipitate into
significant elements as such (that is, consciously perceived "meanings"), but rather
may operate by means of the circulation of "affects".
The approach to acting adopted by other theatre practitioners involve varying degrees
of concern with the semiotics of acting. Konstantin Stanislavski, for example,
addresses the ways in which an actor, building on what he calls the "experiencing" of a
role, should also shape and adjust a performance in order to support the overall
significance of the drama—a process that he calls establishing the "perspective of the
role". The semiotics of acting plays a far more central role in Bertolt Brecht's epic
theatre, in which an actor is concerned to bring out clearly the sociohistorical
significance of behaviour and action by means of specific performance choices—a
process that he describes as establishing the "not/but" element in a performed physical
"gestus" within context of the play's overal "Fabel". Eugenio Barba argues that actors
ought not to concern themselves with the significance of their performance behaviour;
this aspect is the responsibility, he claims, of the director, who weaves the signifying
elements of an actor's performance into the director's dramaturgical "montage".
The theatre semiotician Patrice Pavis, alluding to the contrast between Stanislavski's
'system' and Brecht's demonstrating performer—and, beyond that, to Denis Diderot's
foundational essay on the art of acting, Paradox of the Actor (c. 1770—78)—argues
that:
Acting was long seen in terms of the actor's sincerity or hypocrisy—should he believe
in what he is saying and be moved by it, or should he distance himself and convey his
role in a detached manner? The answer varies according to how one sees the effect to
be produced in the audience and the social function of theatre.
Elements of a semiotics of acting include the actor's gestures, facial expressions,
intonation and other vocal qualities, rhythm, and the ways in which these aspects of an
individual performance relate to the drama and the theatrical event (or film, television
programme, or radio broadcast, each of which involves different semiotic systems)
considered as a whole.[12] A semiotics of acting recognises that all forms of acting
involve conventions and codes by means of which performance behaviour acquires
significance—including those approaches, such as Stanislvaski's or the closely
related method acting developed in the United States, that offer themselves as "a
natural kind of acting that can do without conventions and be received as self-evident
and universal." Pavis goes on to argue that:
Any acting is based on a codified system (even if the audience does not see it as such)
of behaviour and actions that are considered to be believable and realistic or artificial
and theatrical. To advocate the natural, the spontaneous, and the instinctive is only to
attempt to produce natural effects, governed by an ideological code that determines, at
a particular historical time, and for a given audience, what is natural and believable and
what is declamatory and theatrical.
The conventions that govern acting in general are related to structured forms of play,
which involve, in each specific experience, "rules of the game."[ This aspect was first
explored by Johan Huizinga (in Homo Ludens, 1938) and Roger Caillois (in Man, Play
and Games, 1958). Caillois, for example, distinguishes four aspects of play relevant to
acting: mimesis (simulation), agon (conflict or competition), alea (chance),
and illinx (vertigo, or "vertiginous psychological situations" involving the
spectator's identification or catharsis).[13] This connection with play as an activity was
first proposed by Aristotle in his Poetics, in which he defines the desire to imitate in
play as an essential part of being human and our first means of learning as children:
For it is an instinct of human beings, from childhood, to engage in mimesis (indeed, this
distinguishes them from other animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through
mimesis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that everyone
enjoys mimetic objects. (IV, 1448b)
This connection with play also informed the words used in English (as was the
analogous case in many other European languages) for drama: the word "play" or
"game" (translating the Anglo-Saxon plèga or Latin ludus) was the standard term used
until William Shakespeare's time for a dramatic entertainment—just as its creator was a
"play-maker" rather than a "dramatist", the person acting was known as a "player", and,
when in the Elizabethan era specific buildings for acting were built, they was known as
"play-houses" rather than "theatres."

Resumes and auditions

Actors and actresses need to make a resume when applying for roles. The acting
resume is very different from a normal resume; it is generally shorter, with lists instead
of paragraphs, and it should have a head shot on the back. Usually, a resume also
contains a short 30 second to 1 minute reel about the person, so that the casting
director can see your previous performances, if any.
Auditioning is the act of performing either a monologue or sides (lines for one
character)[ as sent by the casting director. Auditioning entails showing the actor's skills
to present themselves as a different person; it may be as brief as two minutes. For
theater auditions it can be longer than two minutes, or they may perform more than one
monologue, as each casting director can have different requirements for actors. Actors
should go to auditions dressed for the part, to make it easier for the casting director to
visualize them as the character. For television or film they will have to undergo more
than one audition. Oftentimes actors are called into another audition at the last minute,
and are sent the sides either that morning or the night before. Auditioning can be a
stressful part of acting, especially if one has not been trained to audition.
Rehearsal
Rehearsal is a process in which actors prepare and practice a performance, exploring
the vicissitudes of conflict between characters, testing specific actions in the scene,
and finding means to convey a particular sense. Some actors continue to rehearse a
scene throughout the run of a show in order to keep the scene fresh in their minds and
exciting for the audience.

Audience
A critical audience with evaluative spectators is known to induce stress on actors
during performance, (see Bode & Brutten). Being in front of an audience sharing a
story will makes the actors intensely vulnerable. Shockingly, an actor will typically rate
the quality of their performance higher than their spectators. Heart rates are generally
always higher during a performance with an audience when compared to rehearsal,
however what's interesting is that this audience also seems to induce a higher quality
of performance. Simply put, while public performances cause extremely high stress
levels in actors (more so amateur ones), the stress actually improves the performance,
supporting the idea of "positive stress in challenging situations"

Heart rate
Depending on what an actor is doing, his or her heart rate will vary. This is the body's
way of responding to stress. Prior to a show one will see an increase in heart rate due
to anxiety. While performing an actor has an increased sense of exposure which will
increase performance anxiety and the associated physiological arousal, such as heart
rate. Heart rates increases more during shows compared to rehearsals because of the
increased pressure, which is due to the fact that a performance has a potentially
greater impact on an actors career. After the show a decrease in the heart rate due to
the conclusion of the stress inducing activity can be seen. Often the heart rate will
return to normal after the show or performance is done; however, during the applause
after the performance there is a rapid spike in heart rate. This can be seen not only in
actors but also with public speaking and musicians.

Stress
There is a correlation between heart-rate and stress when actors' are performing in
front of an audience. Actors claim that having an audience has no change in their
stress level, but as soon as they come on stage their heart-rate rises quickly. A 2017
study done in an American University looking at actors' stress by measuring heart-rate
showed individual heart-rates rose right before the performance began for those actors
opening. There are many factors that can add to an actors' stress. For example, length
of monologues, experience level, and actions done on stage including moving the set.
Throughout the performance heart-rate rises the most before an actor is speaking. The
stress and thus heart-rate of the actor then drops significantly at the end of a
monologue, big action scene, or performance.