Acting, like almost everything we consume, is an art. It’s the art of losing yourself in the name of other people’s enjoyment. During my first year of acting, I just thought that looking angry was enough during a high energy scene. I wish I could tell that little theater dork at the time that it’s more than faking an emotion. It doesn’t take skill to cross your eyebrows and speak words. Or to study and learn lines. There is a reason why people get filthy rich off this nerdy hobby. And that reason is it takes a lot of focus to not be you.

This stuff has been talked about for eons. The history of acting as a science has a lot of wordy books, Russians, very weird exercises that you will get laughed at for, and worst of all, old people. In short, it’s boring. It’s weird, and it’s boring. So I am going to keep it as simple as I can, since I want to write an article, not a lullaby. 

There was a Russian man who decided to make acting realistic. During Shakespeare’s time, actors would just go extremely overboard for the sake of raking in dough. Flailing their limbs around like a screaming toddler in Walmart in order to get peasants at the time to cheer and scream. It was never meant to be realistic, rather just entertaining. But this Russian wanted realism above all else. His name was Stanislavski. If you saw an actor give such an amazing and real performance, this is the guy you want to thank.

He kind of had two parts in his ideas, embodiment and purpose. Feel what the character is doing and saying while understanding why. If you go up to a drama teacher in this school, they are probably going to teach you this without telling you they are. Since it’s basic and easy to understand. If you are starting out as an actor, this is a great place to start. Think about why this character is doing this, rather than saying “Oh that’s the line I have to say on stage.”

Another Russian theater dork is Chekhov. His way of teaching acting is famous, and you have probably heard of it. He made method acting a thing which is playing your character off stage. That means you wake up, and you play your character. You would cook breakfast how your character would. You live as your character. There have been extreme stories of people doing this. Joaquin Phoenix is a living example of this. He pretended to have a mental breakdown while playing a role. He even got in a fight just for the role. Then he acted strangely during a talk show he was on. If you want to try this, be careful. I am not trying to sound paranoid or that I’m trying to scare you, but if you do something wack in the name of your role don’t point the finger at me.

This is where I stop talking about Russians, but rather the man I am talking about was born in Austria Hungary. He was born where modern Ukraine is. Which is ironic with what is going on but eh whatever. Lee Strasberg, like others I have mentioned, was a student of Stanislavski. His interpretation set him far apart from others though. He felt like the best way to act emotion was to feel that emotion. Sounds simple right? Well the way he would do this was by thinking about past moments in his life. Want to be happy in a scene? Just think about the moment when you were extremely happy. Need to feel sad? Think about an extreme moment of sadness in your life. You can maybe see the issue with this. It can hurt you mentally to do this. It will halt the healing of wounds.

There are many ways to do acting. But my biggest piece of advice is this. Just practice whatever works for you. Acting is not a science that can be tested. Go out and try some for yourself. Maybe look into other ways to act as well. There are many out there, and I just listed the main ones.