Talk:Presentational acting

Here is the original version of this article before I rewrote it. I have detailed my reasons for rewriting it beneath the original. DionysosProteus 01:27, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Representational acting is a concept in theatre which holds that actors should strive to, in some sense, become their characters, rather than simply portraying them. For instance, rather than thinking about what would be entertaining for the audience, or what would fit symbolically or abstractly with the character, the actor strives to feel what the character feels and think what the character thinks, with the end result that they do what the character would do.

Renowned acting theorist and practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski, later in his career, developed his "Method of Physical Action," which described how, actually, the actor may play the actions of the character truthfully, in order to portray that character realistically to the audience. In other words, the "actions" come first; there is no "striving to feel" the condition of the character. Acting is simply doing, never feeling. This later development--which Stanislavsky used in his rehearsals--is often misunderstood or ignored by actors trained in the American Method, espoused by Lee Strasberg and others. Acting teacher Stella Adler, who is the only American to actually work with Stanislavski himself (in Paris in the mid-1930's), believed that ACTIONS played truthfully in the circumstances of the play, using one's IMAGINATION, was the proper road to playing a role. Others, including Bobby Lewis, Sanford Meisner, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, and Russian practitioners agree. The idea that character is based on "action,"--and not feelings--comes to us originally from Aristotle in his Poetics.

This is challenging for many reasons. The actor must still adhere to the script in traditional theatre, although not so in improvisational acting or roleplaying.

Presentational acting, on the other hand, is an approach to stage performance where the actor presents more of a character idea to an audience without regard to representation of realistic characterization at all, using Bertolt Brecht's "alienation" idea in performance serves as a clear example. In presentational theatre the actor can directly address the audience with stage dialogue.

[edit] References

* Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen

As it stood, this article is / (was) a little confused.

Firstly, it does not address the contradiction between the terminology that Konstantin Stanislavski and his followers (the article cites Uta Hagen, for example) use and that used by the wider critical community when discussing these issues in aesthetics.

The problem here is that Stanislavski's terminology was the OPPOSITE of that used here and by the wider community.

Stanislavski described his own approach--that of 'experiencing' the role and creating it afresh each time onstage--as 'presentational,' while he described an approach whereby the actor prepares the role during rehearsals and reproduces those results onstage as 'representational' (because the actor 're-presents' his/her results). (See Chapter Two, 'When Acting is an Art' of Stanislavski's *An Actor Prepares*)

The same terms are also used in a very DIFFERENT sense (in fact, an almost opposed sense) in aesthetics to describe the performer's functional relationship with the audience.

'Representational' acting, in this sense, refers to the maintenance of a 'Fourth Wall', whereby the performer pretends that the audience are not present and they are treated as 'peeping tom' voyeurs.

'Presentational' acting, in this sense, refers to a relationship that acknowledges the audience, whether directly by addressing them or indirectly through the use of language, looks, gestures or other signs that indicate that the character(s) are aware of the audience's presence (Shakespeare's use of punning and wordplay, for example, often has this indirect function - see Robert Weimann's Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition.)

Thus, the terms 'representational' and 'presentational' acting have been used both to describe the processes that the actor uses in the preparation and execution of the role AND to describe the functional relationship that the performance creates with the audience.

The second problem with this article is that the central elaboration of the distinction between the early and later approaches of Stanislavski (that which formed the basis of Strasberg et al's 'Method Acting' and that which became known as the 'Method of Physical Actions) isn't pertinent to the title of this article, and so doesn't really belong here.

The third problem is that in attempting to define 'presentational' acting, the article misrepresents completely the approach to performance developed by Bertolt Brecht. Brechtian acting is not about presenting merely an 'idea' of the character, nor does it elide realistic characterization. Brecht thought of himself as a realist! Brecht has discussed the use of Stanislavskian techniques in the preparation of a role. It would be more accurate to say that a Brechtian approach requires the actor to go further than a Stanislavskian approach, whereby the actor supplements their empathatically-felt experiencing of the character with distanced, critical commentary 'from the outside'.

'Presentational' performance is not necessarily less realistic, nor is its mode of characterization less 'fully-rounded,' than 'representational' performance.

While it is appropriate to use Brechtian acting as an example of 'presentational' acting (in the sense used in aesthetics), the reasons for doing so lie in the functional relation with the audience that it establishes - an attitude of narration of events known as 'epic'.

Other examples of the kind of relationship that 'presentational' acting establishes could include the 'platea'-playing modes in Elizabethan / Shakespearean theatre, along with the convention of actor-delivered (in contrast to character-delivered) prologues and epilogues and the extensive use of the 'aside' in Restoration comedy.

DionysosProteus 13:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Re-write
I have written a substantial portion of a new version of this article, defining the most common use of these terms in critical theory. I will add the sense elaborated by Stanislavski and Uta Hagen tomorrow.

DionysosProteus 05:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Re-wrting in progress
I'm still working on this page and will update it in the next week or so. I need to elaborate on Uta's idiosyncratic use of the terms. I also want to develop the initial descriptions of presentational to include Brecht and the theory of epic structures in drama and performance. Any comments on the rewrite so far most welcome

DionysosProteus 00:28, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Best way to describe Uta's terminology
I'm not so sure that my choice of 'rehearsal-performance relationship' is the best way to describe Stanislavski's and Uta's use of 'representation'. Maybe for Stan, but maybe not for Uta. Maybe it's just simpler to say 'methodological approaches' or something like that. Will think about this more...

I've put Bernhardt/Duse images here without having discussed them. Didn't want to lose the links to these particular images, as I think they work well together.

DionysosProteus 03:15, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Uta's confusion
Stanislavski's choice of the phrase 'art of representation' to describe an artistic approach that diverges from his own is unfortunate, given that the theatre that results from his own 'experiencing the role' approach is 'representational' in the wider critical sense. Uta Hagen's decision to use 'presentational' as a synonym for Stanislavski's 'experiencing the role' served to compound the confusion.