Monday, May 28, 2012

Acting Coach in Los Angeles- Childhood Fears

By Kirk Baltz


As with any art form, acting is an ability that requires hard work and long hours. Instead, significant effort and training are required to form an individual skilled in his or her craft. To reach this goal, an actor must delve into his soul and discover who he truly is as a person.

Each person and character alike is multi-faceted as opposed to being one-dimensional and static. The three dimensions, in particular, that compose the human person are the tragic flaw, the public persona, and our ubiquitous lifelong insecurities and difficulties. An acting coach can not only help an actor uncover his own dimensions but can also aid him or her in using these traits to create dimensional and relatable characters.

Our public persona, according to Carl Jung, is the image that we present to the rest of society and is designed to mask our true feelings, emotions, and insecurities. This created persona presents itself in numerous ways throughout our lives. Like real people, characters also have public personas making it necessary for acting classes to teach actors how to use themselves to develop these facades.

Although the public persona is the dimension that is the most easily recognizable and obvious in a character, it is only an exterior facade and not the core of the individual. The root of a person's character is grounded in their growth and development from childhood. Acting workshops are quite helpful in training students to come to grips with these important facets of their being, allowing them to create very real characters.

Our childhood challenges and situations mold us as adults and remain with us for the duration of our lifetime. The same is true of created characters. Covering up these vulnerabilities under a shield of stability is our means of appearing strong rather than helpless to others.

The mark of a great actor is his or her ability to dig past both their own and their character's public persona to the actual person within. The best coaches will aid their students in both uncovering and portraying the inner workings of the human condition.

All persons in the audience, like the actor and the character, have both a personal core as well as a public persona they have created to protect it. Regardless of whether or not they are aware of this fact, creating a dimensional character will never fail to hit a chord with the watcher. Being able to create characters such as these is what separates the average actor from the exceptional.




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