Third Guest Writer: A woman with 25 years of experience in theater who now teaches!!! You definitely want to read this!
"Perhaps I should tell you a little of my background: I have over 25yrs as an actress, I am an ensemble member of The Moving Dock Theatre Co./Chekhov Studio Chicago where I occasionally teach, I also teach acting at Terra Sounds School of Music and Art"
"I have been thinking quite a bit about what it means to be a 'sensitive actor'. I think the most widely held idea is that a sensitive actor is that individual whose feelings can very quickly and sometimes overwhelmingly go into a heightened state or that these individual's feelings run deeper than most others'. These are things I have heard in regards to myself and other actors, as well as most artists, all of my life. They assume that a sensitive actor is someone who is overflowing with waves of big swelling emotion that they can barely contain, the person that cries at the drop of a hat, etc.
"You actor types are so sensitive!"
Ring a bell? I really don't think actors can lay a claim to feeling more than most any other human. Everyone shares the same rich tapestry of emotions and for the most part feel them just as keenly. Perhaps there is a connection to sensitivity as to how the actor is able to more easily reveal his emotions, and I should say, must do so for his job. The capacity for how readily the actor expresses his feelings, and the choices as to how, show the actor's ability and artistry. I think there is a connection here as to what it is to be a sensitive actor. It is all a part of the whole, yes? But the challenging task for the actor is to express the inner-life freely, without hesitation on stage, without forcing his feelings or getting in his own way.
Well, what I have been contemplating in regards to the root of an actor's sensitivity, is that the heart of this lies nestled within the word itself. It has to do with the senses. Or in the case of an artist, his openness to what his senses are trying to tell him. How receptive he is at taking in his surroundings through his senses. How open he is to the stimulation evoked by contact with his scene partners and his environment and atmospheres through the senses. The difficulties for the actor are when he then tries to immediately identify or jump to a self-pressured feeling about what he is experiencing, or aim at a dry analysis of the moment...he then misses the moment completely!
The sensitive actor must be open to the physical sensations that he is experiencing in the moment and allow them to just to be...to occur. It is in this allowing of the experience that he can then listen for the impulse to do, in order to respond to this sensitive input. This will inherently awaken the feeling life of the actor, and the actor's creative imagination, and begin to silence the intellect. (The logical, reasoning intellect is the scourge of the actor, it kills creativity). Then the actor's feelings can come alive and begin to play organically not in a forced way. As long as he is willing to allow for this to happen. He must listen without analyzation to what has been awakened and what it urges him to do in the moment. The filtered-through character, of course, and shaped by the context of the play's circumstances. But first, before we invite character, the actor must be willing to let his senses inform him, to allow himself to be awakened. If we are diligent and disciplined to staying open to the input our senses are receiving off stage, in our everyday lives, we can then develop our capacity to listen to them on stage or in front of the camera. They will become accessible and one of the greatest tools that an actor can have.
It lives in the giving and receiving with our partners, how we allow ourselves to be influenced by the atmosphere of the play, how when our character runs her hand along the sheets she can feel the body of her lover who is no longer there... I think perhaps it is this sensitivity to how one experiences, one perceives that raises the actor to artist. This is what is exemplified in the 'talented' actor. Can this be developed? Can we grow our capacity for sensitivity? Absolutely. Experience the moment. Now is now. Stay open."
