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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 possible to be a full part of other groups.

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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 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,

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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 a connection between the mind and body.

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 (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

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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 essential 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).

Proper pronunciation is not just about mentally knowing how the word is supposed

to sound, but also physically being able to sound out the word. In everyday conversation,

people can have trouble physically speaking words. Meaning, our words get all jumbled up

while we speak to others. It is as if our oral muscles tighten up and our mouth can’t get

around the words. While properly articulating words, the mouth uses many muscles. These

muscles must be loose so the actor can take full advantage of the muscle control. Actors

utilize many warm up techniques in order to loosen their jaw, tongue, lips, and other

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speaking muscles. So actors really do perform warm-ups, such as the popular “red leather,

yellow leather” exercise seen in the media. Proper pronunciation and articulation leads to

better communication with the audience and being understood by the audience is what the

actor is being paid to do.

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

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even the people in the back row can see what the actor is doing. Although actors 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, but also for singing. In order to not strain the

voice, actors must keep their voice strong through practice and warm-ups. This is similar

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to the thought process of warming up the articulating muscles. For the actor to hit their

notes and be understood while singing, they must keep their voices loose. Actors will go

around singing their favorite musical number or while walking to class, begin a vocal

warm-up by doing scales.

Another 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). An actor’s research is always happening.

Anytime social behavior can be observed, which is almost always. We are constantly

surrounded by social interactions, whether physically or digitally via text and social media

websites. So observations are made while actively researching for a role, and also through

these everyday social interactions.

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

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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.

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.

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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, 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

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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 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 emotion of the character. This is a very

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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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