Method Acting - True or False (with Tom Carter)

Recently I've been having a great email exchange with Tom Carter, author of a book that I am re-reading called "Choral Charisma."  His book is aimed mostly at choral directors who want their choirs to sing with expression, but would be great for coaches and singers as well.  If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend you buy it!

Tom often describes his philosophy as "method acting for singers" and we've been having this discussion about Mamet's statements on the topic, which I have quoted in a previous article.  It's a bit of a mess, so let me try to sort it out for you.

The issue boils down to this - is it necessary for a performer to generate the emotions in himself in order to act them out believably.  Simple enough question, with huge implications for performers.

Mamet suggests in his book, "True or False", that a performer needs to simply follow the script, and act each scene with an appropriate objective in order to be believable and convincing.  The performer may feel emotions as a result of acting the scene (much like the audience), but it is a result of the acting, not a precondition to it.  Therefore he suggests that Stanislavski's "method" (a.k.a. method acting) is completely backward, self-aggrandizing, causes insecurities and other issues, and simply does not work.

However, Stanislavski says this in his classic book "An Actor Prepares" (thanks, Tom Carter, for the quote):

You can understand a part, sympathize with the person portrayed, and put yourself in his place, so that you will act as he would. That will arouse feelings in the actor that are analogous to those required for the part. But those feelings will belong, not to the persona created by the author of the play, but to the actor himself.

It seem quite clear that Mamet and Stanislavski are saying the same thing!  So why the conflict?

It turns out that Mamet's words are a backlash against the various Method Acting schools that misunderstood Stanislavski's intent, and produced a whole generation (or at least a lot) of actors who believe that you have to feel it first, in order to generate a believable performance.  Indeed many actors in Hollywood have taken this idea to ridiculous extremes, at great risk to their own health and well being.  Christian Slater decided he needed to take drugs in order to play a drug addict, and got himself famously addicted to drugs.  Dustin Hoffman ran around New York City for hours in order to play someone who was exhausted, famously prompting Sir Lawrence Olivier to say, "Just act man!"

So where does this leave us?  I'm inclined to agree with Mamet and Stanislavski.  Use your personal history and humanity, your "emotional memory", in order to understand the situation in the scene (remember this can be a scene in a play, or it can be a musical piece, or any other sort of performance), and act that scene passionately with the objective of the character in mind.  If you surrender to the scene, you will experience feelings that come out of that scene.  Not the other way around.

This all makes sense, because suspension of disbelief works just as well for the actors as it does for the audience.  Perhaps more so, because their immersion is more complete - they are in the scene, while the audience merely observes it.

This might all be a bit academic, but in a nutshell, don't worry about it.  Figure out what the purpose and objectives are for your performance, and dive in!  Emotions will come.