Living the Part

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 170, 8 October 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Living the Part

CONTROVERSY AMONG | LEADING ACTORS AND ACTRESSES PRODUCES INTERESTING RESULTS AND OPINIONS

WHAT THEY THINK

Should an actor “live” the part he acts, or only seem to do so?

This question has resulted in a controversy in the English papers. Here are some opinions: It is only by feeling, says Mathescn Lang, that the brain telegraphs emotions to the body. The actor can teach himself to feel, but not to stimulate feeling mechanically; or if he does the result is parrot-like imitation, not acting.

Norman McKinnel thinks that acting should be the result of the possession of vocal, facial, and imaginative attributes, combined with minute study, carefully calculated effort, and adequate rehearsal. An actor’s job is not to feel emotions, but to make his audience feel them, and if he loses sight of that fact he loses grip of his audience.

To act well, says Ernest Thesiger, is to *1 imulate and not to offer realism. Fay Compton half agrees with Garrick and half with Bernhardt; one should weep real tears, but should have the emotions under perfect control. The pla3 r er, Athene Seyler thinks, should feel merely the intellectual excitement that accompanies any emotion. Owen Nares says that in playing a highly emotional part the actor or actress of real worth experiences a certain amount of feeling during final rehearsals and initial performances. An effect once produced while under the influence of this real emotion can soon be “stereot3 r ped” and reproduced maay times without the strain required for its inception. Miles Malleson, who plays comedy, does not live a part, but does try at rehearsal to put himself into the personality of the part. If actively he lets himself think of other things while a performance is proceeding, or speaks under his breath to other players, he finds that the responsive laughter of the audience dwindles. Pauline Frederick, as one would ex-

pect, believes in weeping real tears and suffering real anguish. "At every performance at the Lyceum,” she says, “I entered so thoroughly into the character of Madame X. and her great sorrow that I can truthfully say for the better part of an hour afterwards I was prostrate in my dressing-room.”