What is Acting?

Who hasn’t wanted to be someone else at one time or another? It’s simple human nature - everybody, at some point, wishes in the throes of jealousy or insecurity or shame that he were someone else - anyone but himself. Wouldn’t it be wonderful (or at least instructive) to experience life from someone else’s point of view - to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes? And what would you do with that mile if you got the chance?

Acting is also a way for us to work out our personal identity crises - to work on answering that eternal question, “who am I?” By playing different roles, we get to try on different personalities, different occupations, different attitudes towards life - essentially, different versions of ourselves. Acting is also a game - a flirtation with our fellow actors, and with our audience, where nothing is at stake because everything is make-believe - and so, perhaps, we are able to reveal sides of ourselves that we keep in check in our everyday lives. “Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth,” as Oscar Wilde said: ironically, it is often when we are pretending to be somebody else that we are most ourselves.

This, perhaps, is the crucial factor that differentiates acting from lying. Actors during the Renaissance were often denounced as liars - castigated for portraying fictions with an air of reality. And both acting and lying certainly involve an element of pretense - so why is it that while anyone can lie, acting is such a rarified talent? The answer is that while lying is nothing but pretense, acting is an oblique stab at the truth - a sneak attack on insight and revelation.

Of course, acting is more than a cheap form of therapy. There is a simple joy in performing - a form of exhibitionism - that is common to everyone from Kenneth Branagh to Pauly Shore. The classically-trained stage actor, the anonymous film extra, the stand-up comedian; the circus clown, the star athlete, the rock star; the go-go dancer, the politician, and the snake charmer toiling for pennies on a street corner are all alike in this respect: they enjoy showing off. They thrive on publicity, actively seeking out the limelight, drawing sustenance from their audience like vampires. Whereas some people shy purposefully away from attention, performers crave it, getting a thrill from simply being watched. And despite the narcissism inherent to this type of self-promotion, performers serve a valuable social function by providing the public entertainment upon which people everywhere depend for their own distraction and solace (see related article: Why We Watch Plays).

In the simplest terms, acting is very simply doing something. And perhaps that really is the best definition. In the personae of various characters, actors get to do the things that others only dream of doing. And in so doing, they serve as models, teachers, heroes, and confessors for the rest of the world. One could almost go so far as to say that there are two types of people: the watchers and the watched; askers and tellers; followers and leaders - those who wait and see and those who do. And actors are, undeniably, the latter.

As actors, we get that chance on a daily basis. We have the wonderful and unique opportunity to escape our own skins - our own lives and problems - each day. When we are acting, we get to be someone else for a little while. Acting can be a drug - an escape mechanism and a high. By empathizing with our characters and then vicariously experiencing their catharsis and resolution, we get a break from our own restlessness and angst. Maybe after the performance, having suffered through all of our characters’ problems, we’ll appreciate our “real” lives more. Failing this, at least we will have had the chance to lose ourselves briefly in our characters, momentarily leaving the real world behind. It can be awfully therapeutic to put your energy into something outside of yourself.