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Kayla Smith

Professor Kevin Oberlin

Intermediate Composition

18 July 2013

Creating the Character

Throughout our lives, we become associated with different types of social

groups. Each group has varying types of acceptable behaviors. An individual must

adopt these social requirements, at least while communicating to people within

these groups, in order to be truly accepted. The groups may have different

standards of social behavior, dress, use of language, and forms of communication.

Most of these discourses not only have set rules of acceptable behavior, but also

have set rules of unacceptable behavior. Then there is a question of what if anything

goes? What about a discourse whose soul purpose is to be able to mimic the

behavior seen in other discourses? This is what can be seen in the theater

community.

James Paul Gee describes Discourse as “ways of being in the world; forms of

life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as

well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (526). To simplify the idea of

a discourse, it is best to think of individual discourses as cliques in a stereotypical

high school. Each clique has a different style of clothing, attitude, and ways of

communication. Every person is either “in” or “out”, there is no in between, but it is

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possible to be a full part of other groups. Gee has the same idea. He states, “social

groups will not, usually, give their social goods… to those who are not ‘natives’ or

‘fluent users’” (529).

This is all true of the theater community. Through personal observations

while attending the Youth Performing Arts School in Louisville, Kentucky I have

experienced first hand the clique that is the teenage theater community.

The overall goal of an actor on stage is to realistically portray an array of

characters. Many actors may be typecast based on their looks, but the great actors

can become any character thrown at them. Actors must communicate the ideas of

both the playwright and the director in each and every one of their performances.

Elizabeth Losh, a writer for Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing,

describes how “[Writing] changes shape, form, and function depending on what

we’re communicating, to whom, and how” (Losh et al “Going Public” 259). The

playwright writes the play for the actors and the director. Then through weeks of

rehearsals, actors take on the behaviors and thoughts of other secondary discourses

that they may or may not be familiar with, in order to express to the audience the

intentions of the playwright and the director. Their modes of communication are

audial, through the voice, and visual, through the body. The voice and the body are

an actor’s “instruments” (Bradford 22 Aug. 2011).

While observing a group of theater students, the two most noticeable things

are their voices and their body language. Students spend a majority of their time

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training their voices and gaining full control of their body. The first step to this

process is bringing both the voice and the body to “neutral”. Dr. Colette Conroy,

author of Theatre & the Body, believes “there is an ideal body for an actor—a

neutral medium of communication that can be trained and that can simply stand for

a character without distracting the audience’s attention” (22). Although Dr. Conroy

was referring to a neutral body in that statement, a neutral voice accomplishes the

same goal.

When training to achieve a neutral voice, the student must maintain a

constant control over their breath using the diaphragm, learn to properly resonate

their voice, and remove accents. So while listening to a seasoned theater student,

you will first notice the volume of their speech. With breath control and the

diaphragm, actors are able to project their voices throughout an entire auditorium

and they become so used to using this technique, it becomes second nature. So while

having a normal conversation with other students, an actor will speak slightly

louder than member of other discourses. Tara McAllister-Viel states, “when in-

breath and thought meet in one responsive act at the diaphragm, training can create

a kind of body/mind relationship” (169). So controlling the breath can also lead to

The other two aspects of a neutral voice that is difficult to hear, unless you

know what you are listening for, is proper resonation and a lack of an accent. Proper

resonation produces a full, deep vocal sound. The areas where the voice will

resonate are the chest, back of the throat, oral cavity, nasal cavity, and the sinuses

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(Blackerby-Weible 4 Sept. 2009). Most actors have learned to properly resonate

their sound and therefore they do not talk through their nose, or have breathy

voices. The lack of an accent is not something that one would ordinarily notice when

they hear a person speaking. However, you realize something is off because this

particular group of students is from Kentucky, yet they are missing the little

southern twang in their accent. This is from years of training to remove their accent

and reach standard American.

One of the most important tools for an actor when trying to achieve standard

American is the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA. When an actor is

having trouble with the pronunciation of a word in their script, they can have

someone pronounce it correctly and make a note of it in IPA in their script. IPA is

very similar to the pronunciation keys found in a dictionary, but there are variations

for different dialects. Essentially, IPA is a written “language”. It is not a spoken

language, because it is used as a visual to help pronounce words correctly. Within

the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, explains where in the mouth

sounds are formed, depicts the symbols used for each sound, and describes how to

use them. The International Phonetic Association promotes the study of phonetics

because “it is desirable to have a consistent way of representing the sounds of a

language in a written form” (3).

With this training of the voice, actors have adapted their oral communication

skills to be above average in comparison to students within other discourses. A

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study done at Baruch College, which is a senior college of the City University of New

York, examines the experience of theater majors and non-theater majors in an

introduction to theater class. Amy Hughes, Jill Stevenson, and Mikhail Gershovich

have found that “An emphasis on oral communication encourages the use of

student-centered teaching techniques, which have been shown to improve student

motivation and over all achievement as well as improve speaking skills.” (98). This

helps to prove that a theater education produces eloquent speakers. So, because of

their training actors tend to not be as nervous (in comparison to members of other

discourses) and are able to articulate their ideas smoothly and efficiently when

giving oral presentations.

Another thing that one would notice while observing a group of actors is

their posture and use of gestures. Most actors have great posture. William Bradford,

a now retired theater teacher from the Youth Performing Arts School says, “sitting

and standing upright not only allows you to take deeper breaths, but also makes you

look thinner” (8 Dec. 2011). So posture coincides with breath control and sitting and

standing straight is aesthetically pleasing. Tara Mcallister-Viel states, “when in-

breath and thought meet in one responsive act at the diaphragm, training can create

a kind of body/mind relationship” (169). So controlling the breath can also lead to

control of the body. In regards to the use of gestures, on stage, gestures must be big

so even the people in the back row can see what the actor is doing. Although actors

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don’t use large gestures while having normal conversations, they do talk with their

hands and use gestures more than other people normally would.

Once one has become a part of the theater discourse, other intricacies

involved with being an actor can be noticed. Uriah Carter, a former student at the

Youth Performing Arts School, said this about acting students, “We are theater kids.

We are dramatic, loud, emotional, and shockingly unpredictable. We criticize movies

and TV shows, we like to burst out in song, and we like to observe and analyze

human behavior. These are all a part of being a theater kid” (10 July 2013). Being in

control of emotions, critical of other actors and performing arts, singing, and

observant are all a part of an actor’s identity kit.

Being in control of one’s emotions, is perhaps one of the most important

aspects of an actor’s identity kit. William Bradford told our theater class “you have a

job to do and you can’t let anything get in the way of that” (12 Jan. 2012). What Mr.

Bradford meant by this is that we need to be able to bring whatever emotion

required in creating a character’s circumstances realistically. You have to push past

your personal emotions at the moment and bring your character’s emotion through.

If the character is happy, an actor should think of the happiest moment they can

think of, or if the character is depressed, an actor should draw on sadness from their

personal lives. Then, once you are offstage and done with your performance, be able

return to your reality. Therefore, actors are greatly in tune with their emotions.

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Something else an actor has a habit of doing is analyzing and criticizing the

artistic choices of TV shows, movies, and plays. In school, we go to see plays and we

must write review analyzing the lighting, props, staging, and actor’s character

choices. This is to help us make better choices with our acting and to understand

how theatrical elements can come together to create a certain effect on the

audience. Theater students are taught to be critical of others’ artistic choices and

that extends into their everyday lives.

This is how students learn the language used within the theater discourse. As

David Bartholomae said in his article “Inventing the University”, “every time a

student sits down to write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion—

invent the university, that is, or a branch of it” (511). Throughout my research and

writing this paper, I am writing using my knowledge learned from this English Class.

When an actor writes a review, they must invent the theater discourse and use

technical terms used within the discourse. Through these terms and insightful

opinions of the show itself, teachers can gauge the progress an actor has made in

their training.

It is a bit of a stereotype that all theater students burst into some sort of

musical number, but it is somewhat accurate. It is true for a majority of musical

theater actors, not necessarily true of straight theater students. A lot of actors are

triple threats, meaning they can sing, act, and dance since musicals are becoming

more and more popular. So an actor not only has to train their voice for speaking,

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but also for singing. It is very important to keep the voice strong through warm-ups

and practice. Actors will go around singing their favorite musical number or while

walking to class, begin a vocal warm-up by doing scales.

Another important tool actors have at their disposal is their keen sense of

observation. Mr. Bradford always said “keep your eyes and ears open, because one

day you may have to turn the person you see walking down the street into a

character onstage. People-watching is one of the best training techniques” (5 Oct

2011). This was one of the greatest pieces of advice he had ever given. It is an

actor’s job to create realities within a play. The best way to create a realistic

character is to draw from the observations seen in normal human behavior. Actors

will take note on observable behavior and research literary genres used by multiple

discourses since “genres reflect the typical strategies for communicating and

behaving” (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi 152).

One of the biggest names in acting theory is Konstantin Stanislavski. He has

developed a system in which actors set up the circumstances for their characters

and his system was the most regularly method used by the students at the Youth

Performing Arts School. An actor begins by separating the “beats” in a scene. In this

case, the beat refers to a single thought or moment driven by the same idea.

Throughout Uriah Carter’s personal script of Macbeth, she has drawn lines between

each beat (ntd. in Shakespeare). A side note for each beat contains information on

the objective, tactics, “what if’s”, and subtext.

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The objective is what the character wants out of the scene. For example,

Uriah played the first witch and the objective she has written for the first scene is

“to plan a meeting with Macbeth” (ntd. in Shakespeare 7). Tactics are how a

character will achieve their objective. The first witch achieves her objective by

“ask[ing] [her] sisters questions” (ntd. in Shakespeare 8). Then, seeing as Uriah is

not, nor ever will be a witch, she uses Stanislavski’s “magic If”. “Stanislavski did not

think that an actor could honestly believe in the truth and reality of events onstage,

but he said that an actor could believe in the possibility of events. An actor must

only try and answer the question ‘what would I do if I were…” (Moore 29). The

questioning of what if, leads to realistic tactics. Lastly, throughout a script, an actor

will note the subtext of various lines. The subtext is the unspoken thoughts or

meanings of the actual text. Christina Haas performed a study observing the

development of a biology student in her strategies of reading. The student’s reading

became more “sophisticated” once she moved away from trying to “find out what

[the author] is really saying” (Haas 364). However this is the goal of an actor while

reading through the script. Humans do not always come right out and say exactly

what they mean, so neither does a playwright and the actor has to decode the

message the writer wants to say.

The use of the Stanislavski method as an actor goes hand-in-hand with using

Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos while writing. “Aristotle says that to be effective,

a communicator has to take three concepts into consideration: ethos (ethical,

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ethics), pathos (empathy), [and] logos (logical)” (Losh et al “Why Rhetoric?” 43). An

actor must make a logical argument for the choices they make for their character,

try to make the audience feel empathy toward the character, and take the

character’s ethics into account while forming the character.

When an actor is in a show, not only do they rehearse their portrayal of a

member of a secondary discourse, but also it is not uncommon for the actor to begin

adopting these behaviors outside of rehearsal. It is normal in other discourses to see

that individuals have difficulty separating the aspects of their multiple secondary

discourses, whether it is integrating and combining vocabulary within discourses, or

mixing behaviors from each discourse. All of your discourses are a part of who you

are and it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep every discourse separate while

participating in a separate discourse.

Actors are no different. While rehearsing and performing a play, the actor

has to become the character and truly be a part of the character’s secondary

discourse. All of the physical and emotional training that actors go through is all for

one purpose, to be able to portray a character in a play. Usually it is not socially

acceptable to adopt behaviors that belong to different discourses, but that is a

normal behavior in the theater discourse. Actors have become experts at what Gee

refers to as “mushfake”, which is basically pretending to be a part of a discourse you

aren’t (533). Until you have the fluent control needed to be a true member of the

discourse, you must act like you belong until you really do. If at all possible, an actor

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might do research by going into the character’s discourse, which may prove

dangerous.

When an actor sets out to experience what a character has experienced, it is

called method acting. This is a highly controversial method among actors today, as

it can lead to dangerous behaviors. There are many forms of method acting; all are

variations from Konstantin Stanislavski’s original theories. Susan Verducci points

out “although several strains of Method acting exist, they all possess in common the

belief that an actor begins his or her work by discovering and making the inner,

emotional and psychological life of a character real. The external embodiment, the

character's physical life, naturally follows” (89). When most actors speak of “method

acting” however, they are referring to the technique of physically living what the

character has gone through.

This technique is much like a federal agent going undercover to bust a crime

ring. The agent is vulnerable interacting directly with dangerous criminals and must

conform all of his behavior to that of the discourse of these criminals. So what if an

actor is portraying the life of a gangster or a drug addict? “With each and every

character, actors must excavate personal connections with, and find something of

value in, even the most despicable of characters” (Verducci 95). Most people do not

know what it is like to be a part of these dangerous discourses, so they have trouble

making these personal connections. So some actors will take these desperate

measures and integrate themselves into the discourse so they can portray the real

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emotion of the character. This is a very extreme method and although is still used

today, students are warned to the dangers of method acting.

The theater discourse is unique in the types of behavior acceptable from

members within the discourse. The entire purpose of the theater community is to

transform themselves into members of other discourses. Since these

transformations require different physical, vocal, and mental characteristics, it is

important for an actor to train himself or herself to have a neutral state of being,

before being able to change. This means, no accents, proper speech, and straight

posture. They must also be able to project the character to entire auditorium so an

actor must maintain breath control and use large gestures.

Also, actors must use their sense of observation and do research on their

character and the character’s discourse in order to fully, realistically, and accurately

portray the character. The actor must become the character, and because it is

difficult to keep one’s discourses separate, the actor may adopt attributes from the

character that the actor did not previously have. In most other discourses, this

would not be acceptable, but in the theater discourse it is a requirement to become

someone else.

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Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook.

Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 511-524. Print.

Blackerby-Weible, Katie. Theater II. Youth Performing Arts School, Louisville, KY.

August 22 2009- September 12 2009.

Bradford, William. Theater IV. Youth Performing Arts School, Louisville, KY. August

2011-May 2012.

Carter, Uriah. "Theater Interview." Personal interview. 10 July 2013.

Conroy, Colette. Theatre & the Body. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan,

2010. Print.

Devitt, Amy J., Mary Jo. Reiff, and Anis S. Bawarshi. "Critiquing and Changing

Genres." Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing With Genres. New York:

Pearson/Longman, 2004. 148-83. Print.

Gee, James Paul. “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction and What is

Literacy?” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

525-544. Print.

Haas, Christina. “Learning to Read Biology: One Student’s Rhetorical Development in

College.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

358-375. Print.

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Hughes, Amy E., Jill Stevenson, and Mikhail Gershovich. "Community through

Discourse: Reconceptualizing Introduction to Theatre." Theatre Topics 16.1

(2006): 85-101. ProQuest. Web. 16 July 2013.

International Phonetic Association, ed. Handbook of the International Phonetic

Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Losh, Elizabeth et al. "Going Public" Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to

Writing n.d.: 246-266. Web.

Losh, Elizabeth et al. "Why Rhetoric?" Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to

Writing n.d.: 37-59. Web.

McAllister-Viel, Tara. "(Re)Considering the Role of Breath in Training Actors' Voices:

Insights from Dahnjeon Breathing and the Phenomena of Breath." Theatre

Topics 19.2 (2009): 165-80. ProQuest. Web. 21 July 2013.

Moore, Sonia. The Stanislavski System: The Professional Training of an Actor. New

York, NY: Penguin, 1984. Print.

Verducci, Susan. "A moral method? Thoughts on cultivating empathy through

method acting." Journal of Moral Education 29.1 (2000): 87-99.

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