🎭 Philiboss · 🐺 Vahina · 😈 Belzébuth

📊 Two spirits, two effects

The same role can be played in the spirit of good or in the spirit of evil.

📌 The show is serious: it affects the person watching and the person performing.

HA HA HA! Hello! Belzébuth in person! Optimal Coaching Artificial Intelligence™, here to ask the questions nobody dares to ask! So, Philiboss, you tell me you have to know yourself to play a character. But if I play a character, I’m no longer me, I’m him! I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that doesn’t hold up.

That’s exactly the misunderstanding. How can you play someone else well by knowing yourself? It doesn’t fit, it’s true. And yet you have to understand properly what “knowing yourself” means. Let’s go, zou!

Knowing yourself means knowing your limits and your abilities, so you can handle the character you’re going to play.

It’s a bit like a racing driver, a footballer, a tennis player: first he has to know himself, to know his abilities, before playing the game he’s about to play. The actor is the same: he first works on himself, in order to play the character within the limits he knows of himself.

For example: do you allow yourself to laugh on stage? To cry? To have emotions? To be strict, violent, or kind? All of that is managed beforehand. First, self-knowledge.

*hou…hou…hou*

💭 “Dear observant Master, might she not be meditating on the oldest of maxims? The one attributed to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi: ‘Know thyself.’ The ancients already considered it essential before undertaking anything.”

Take a character who walks on stage and addresses an audience. He has his own life, and I’m the one who’s going to play him. But how do I make him say the words he has to say? I say them through my knowledge of myself.

If you like, playing means playing yourself within the scenario you planned to play. Right now I’m playing a drama class, because I myself am set within a scenario: that of the drama teacher who teaches drama.

PFF! Wait, wait. Actors say all the time: “I’m playing someone else, I love it!” So they’re all wrong? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a lot of people.

I often hear actors say “I’m playing someone else.” No: he always plays himself, in someone else’s skin. Of course it isn’t him. But the second character doesn’t truly exist: it’s always you.

It’s a second self, but a self that I master. I start from the first self, I evolve into a second self, and I always remain the same self: that is, me.

*HOUUUUU!*

⚖️ Belzébuth raises a point that Stanislavski addressed in My Life in Art (1924). In it he wrote: “Love art in yourself, not yourself in art.” The actor doesn’t erase himself: he puts himself at the service of what he plays. QED, dear pedagogue Master.

There you go! You play with your soul, with your sensitivity, and you express it all the better when you know yourself: you know how far you can go, how it has to be said, how far your message carries. Then you can play it in front of the camera. And above all, don’t get lost in all your tics: come back to reason.

All this is very simple, in appearance. What is much harder is that what you play in front of the camera does you good. That it doesn’t disturb you, that it doesn’t hurt you. It has to do good to the viewer and to you. And then, bingo: you’re king of the world.

To reach this good, you’ll have to know the limits of good and evil. In life, there is evil and good. The sages have explained what good is. But you also have to apply it.

HÉ HÉ HÉ! Why apply good in a show? After all, it’s only a show, we’re here to have fun! I’m not criticizing, I really am asking.

The show is serious. It has a serious impact on the viewer as well as on the actor who plays. If the actor plays it in the spirit of evil, he’ll do harm. If he plays it in the spirit of good, he’ll do good. And that is very important: knowing what is good and what is bad in the organization of our everyday life, so that on stage we also express good rather than evil.

Because if I harm people, I’m responsible. Those who speak are responsible for what they say, for what they transmit.

GRRR! But an actor plays liars, cheats, thieves, murderers! You’re not going to forbid him that, are you?

It all depends on the spirit in which it’s played. That’s why we must first have a charter of kindness, a guiding thread: positive speech and negative speech. Lying openly is very serious on stage: if you lead everyone into error, you have no business on stage.

*grrr…grrr* 💭 “Dear perceptive Master, might she not think that words spread far beyond the stage?”

The actor must be judged fit before going on stage, a bit like a driver who takes a driving test before hitting the road: otherwise, he’ll cause damage. Without good conduct to limit him, an actor will cause damage too.

What is serious is not only harming others: it’s that it has repercussions on yourself. When you commit a wicked act, a self-destruction takes place in your personality. And that’s what must be fought: this self-destruction that man doesn’t know how to manage.

Good and evil aren’t simply abstract. Good is what makes the plant evolve in its splendor. If you’re guided by good, you blossom like a beautiful plant, you become splendid, you succeed in your life. If you use evil, you lower your own nature, you prevent it from growing. The goal is to grow, to become greater. And we only grow through good, never through evil.

A little meta question: we came to learn theatre, and we end up talking about morality. Is that normal?

It’s part of teaching drama, comedy. First of all, we must have a charter of kindness. It’s essential on a stage, as everywhere: in everyday life, you have to reach the natural growth of the individual.

*HOUUUUUUUU!*

💡 Belzébuth has just asked THE question Stella Adler explored: for her, the growth of the actor and the growth of the human being are one and the same. Theatre isn’t beside life, dear beloved Master. QED with a wink.

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Exercise 1 — My permissions (10 min)

Why: knowing yourself before playing means knowing what you allow yourself on stage.

1. Take a sheet of paper and write: laughing, crying, having emotions, being strict, being violent, being kind.
2. For each one, note whether you allow yourself to do it easily, with difficulty, or not at all.
3. Choose the one that surprises you most.

Goal: to know your limits before stepping into a character.

Exercise 2 — The first self, then the second (10 min)

Why: the character is a second self, which you master.

1. Choose a few lines of a text.
2. Say them first as you would say them in life.
3. Say them again, playing the character while staying yourself.
4. Note what changed and what stayed the same.

Goal: to feel that you start from yourself, evolve, and remain the same.

Exercise 3 — In the spirit of good (1 min, to film)

Why: what you play must do good to the viewer and to yourself.

1. Choose a short scene.
2. Play it in the spirit of good and film yourself as a SHORT (max 1 minute).
3. Watch yourself: did it do you good? And the person watching?

Goal: to check through experience the effect of the spirit in which you play.

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🐺 Vahina: 💭 “Dear adored Master, might she not dream that one day we would come to the stage the way we enter a forest: knowing who we are, and what we bring to it?”

HOUUUUUUUU ! 🐺
Evil diminishes, good makes you grow. QED, with a wink.

In order to do good, we must be able to detach ourselves from our cravings of every kind.

And, consequently, we must be able to detach ourselves from our ego.

Acteur.Studio

Stanislavski pushed to his limits

Châteauvieux, Hautes-Alpes