(Redirected from Presentational acting)'‘Presentational acting’' and the related '‘representational acting’' are critical terms used within
theatre aesthetics and criticism.
Thanks to a highly idiosyncratic usage by a particular strand of acting theory, however, the terms have come to acquire often overtly contradictory senses.
[1]
In the most common sense (that which relates the specific dynamics of
theatre to the broader aesthetic category of ‘
representational art’ or ‘
mimesis’ in
drama and
literature), the terms describe two contrasting
functional relationships between the actor and the audience that a performance can create.
[2]
In the other (more specialized) sense, the terms describe two contrasting
methodological relationships between an actor’s preparation for a role and their performance of that role.
[3]
The type of theatre that utilizes ‘presentational acting’ in the first sense (of the actor-audience relationship) is usually created by a performer utilizing ‘representational acting’ in the second sense (of their methodology). Conversely, the type of theatre that utilizes ‘representational acting’ in the first sense is usually created by a performer utilizing ‘presentational acting’ in the second sense. While usual, this chiastic relation between the senses of each term to describe an actor's process and the nature of their product does not hold for all cases of theatrical performance.
The actor-audience relationship
In every theatrical performance the manner in which each individual
actor treats the
audience establishes, sustains or varies a particular kind of 'actor-audience relationship' between them.
In some plays all of the actors may adopt the same attitude towards the audience (for example, the entire cast of a production of a
Chekhovian drama will usually ignore the audience until the curtain call); in other plays the performers create a range of different relationships towards the audience (for example, most
Shakespearean dramas have certain characters who frequently adopt a downstage ‘platea’ playing position that is in direct contact with the audience, while other characters behave as if unaware of the audience’s presence).
[4]
Presentational Acting
| Conventionalized 'presentational' devices include the apologetic prologue and epilogue, the induction (much used by Ben Jonson and by Shakespeare in ''The Taming of the Shrew''), the play-within-the-play, the aside directed to the audience, and other modes of direct address. These premeditated and ‘composed’ forms of actor-audience persuasion are in effect ''metadramatic'' and ''metatheatrical'' functions, since they bring attention to bear on the fictional status of the characters, on the very theatrical transaction (in soliciting the audience’s indulgence, for instance), and so on. They appear to be cases of ‘breaking frame’, since the actor is required to step out of his role and acknowledge the presence of the public, but in practice they are licensed means of ''confirming'' the frame by pointing out the pure facticity of the representation. |
| Keir Elam, ''The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama'', p.90 |
‘Presentational acting’, in this sense, refers to a relationship that acknowledges the audience, whether directly by addressing them or indirectly through the use of language, looks, gestures or other
signs that indicate that the character or actor is aware of the audience's presence.
(Shakespeare's use of
punning and
wordplay, for example, often has this function of indirect contact.)
Representational Acting
‘Representational acting’, in this sense, refers to a relationship in which the audience is studiously ignored and treated as 'peeping tom' voyeurs by an actor who remains in-character and absorbed in the dramatic action. The actor behaves as if a
fourth wall were present, which maintains an absolute autonomy of the dramatic fiction from the reality of the theatre.
The rehearsal-performance relationship
The use of these critical terms (in an almost directly ''opposed'' sense from the critical mainstream usage detailed above) to describe two different forms of the 'rehearsal-performance relationship' within an actor's methodology originates from the American
Method actor and teacher
Uta Hagen. She developed this use from a far more
ambiguous formulation offered by the seminal Russian
theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski in chapter two of his acting manual ''
An Actor Prepares'' (1936).
Stanislavski's typology
In 'When Acting is an Art', having watched his students' first attempts at a performance, Stanislavski's fictional persona Tortsov offers a series of critiques, during the course of which he defines different forms and approaches to acting.
They are: 'forced acting', 'overacting', 'the exploitation of art', 'mechanical acting', 'art of representation', and his own 'experiencing the role'. One symptom of the recurrent myopic ideological bias displayed by commentators schooled in the American Method is their frequent confusion of the first five of these categories with one another; Stanislavski, however, goes to some lengths to insist that 'two' of them deserve to be evaluated as '
art' (and ''only'' two of them): his own approach of '‘experiencing the role’' ''and'' that of the '‘art of representation’'.
The difference between the two approaches that are worthy, in Stanislavski's estimation, to be considered '
art' lies in the nature of the relationship that they establish between what an actor does when preparing for a role during the rehearsal process and what they do during their performance of that role before an audience.
During rehearsals, Stanislavski argues, both approaches make use of a process of 'living the part' by the actor, in which he (or she) becomes "completely carried away by the play [. . . ], not noticing ''how'' he feels, not thinking about ''what'' he does, and it all moves of its own accord, subconsciously and intuitively."
[5] The actor becomes immersed within the circumstances of the fictional reality experienced by the character in the play and responds 'naturally' and 'organically' to that situation and the events that proceed from it (a 'natural' and 'organic' response conceived along lines originating from
Pavlovian behaviourism and
James-Lang via
Ribot psychophysiology).
[6]
It is in the way in which this work is related to what an actor does during a performance that the two approaches diverge.
In Stanislavski's own 'experiencing the role' approach, "''you must live the part every moment that you are playing it, and every time.'' Each time it is recreated it must be lived afresh and incarnated afresh."
[7] As the repeated use of 'afresh' suggests, Stanislavski's approach retains a quality of
improvisation in performance and strives to enable the actor to experience the emotions of the character on-stage (though emphatically ''not'' by means of focusing on those emotions).
[8]
In contrast, the approach that Stanislavski calls the 'art of representation' uses 'living the role' during rehearsals as "but one of the preparatory stages for further artistic work."
[9] The actor integrates the results of their 'living the part' from their rehearsal process into a finished artistic form--"[t]he portrait ready, it needs only to be framed; that is, put on the stage."
[10] In performance, Stanislavski continues (quoting
Coquelin), "[t]he actor does not live, he plays. He remains cold toward the object of his acting but his art must be perfection."
The actor does not focus on 'experiencing the role' afresh, but, instead, on its "accuracy and artistic finish".
(This conception of the actor's work originates in the philosopher and dramatist
Diderot's ''Paradox of Acting''.)
See Also
Related 'terms' and 'concepts'
★
Dramatic Convention
★
Mimesis and Diegisis
★
The Fourth Wall
★
Meta-reference and
Metatheatre
★
Defamiliarization Effect
★
Figurative Art
Related 'practitioners' and 'dramatic genres'
References
1. This assertion may be demonstrated by even the most cursory search of the web for their current use, which reveals completely opposed usages.
2. Elam , Keir. 1980. ''The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama''. New Accents Ser. Methuen. ISBN 0-416-72060-9 Pbk. p.90-91.
3. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. 'When Acting is an Art' in ''An Actor Prepares''. Methuen. ISBN 0 413 46190 4. p.12-32. Also Hagen, Uta. 1973. ''Respect for Acting''. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-547390-5. p.11-13.
4. Weimann, Robert. 1978. ''Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function.'' The John Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-3506-2 Pbk. See also Counsell, Colin. 1996. ''Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre.'' Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10643-5 Pbk. p.16-23.
5. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. ''An Actor Prepares''. Methuen. ISBN 0 413 46190 4. p.13
6. See Roach, Joseph R. 1985. ''The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting.'' Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Ser. University of Michigan Press. ISBN: 0-472-08244-2 Pbk. Especially chapter six, 'The ''Paradoxe'' as Paradigm: The Structure of a Russian Revolution' p.195-217.
7. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. ''An Actor Prepares''. Methuen. ISBN 0 413 46190 4. p.19
8. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. ''An Actor Prepares''. Methuen. ISBN 0 413 46190 4. p.40-41. Stanislavski insists: "Fix this for all time in your memories: ''On the stage there cannot be, under any circumstances, action which is directed immediately at the arousing of a feeling for its own sake.'' To ignore this rule results only in the most disgusting artificiality. ''When you are choosing some bit of action leave feeling and spiritual content alone.'' Never seek to be jealous, or to make love, or to suffer, for its own sake. ''Of the thing that goes before you should think as hard as you can. As for the result, it will produce itself''" (p.40-41).
9. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. ''An Actor Prepares''. Methuen. ISBN 0 413 46190 4. p.18
10. Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. ''An Actor Prepares''. Methuen. ISBN 0 413 46190 4. p.22
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