As performers (and perhaps more specifically actors), we are asked time and time again to inhabit the skin of another and bring it to life. We are asked to use skill, technique, practice and sheer human will power to breathe life into a two-dimensional construct. As human beings, we don’t live our lives at emotional extremities; as actors portraying characters on stage or on screen, we are often asked to touch and live in these emotional extremities.
Often, it costs the actor something deeply personal. Regardless the acting method - when you are portraying a character in grief, your body can’t tell that you’re acting. It has the same physiological reaction.
In my years of working in the corporate world - as a general rule, corporations do require their employees to give a lot. But rarely do corporations ask their employees to give what actors are asked to give. Corporations have structure, ettiquette, rules and compliance regulations which clearly demarcate the boundaries of emotional attachment and expression. “You have keep it professional at work” is a phrase I’ve said a million times but it is only now that I realize what it really means.
On the other hand, it is an actor’s boundaries are only as narrow as the character they are playing, which is then as wide as the sum of the human emotional spectrum.
And we are asked to do this everytime we walk into an audition, everytime we rehearase, everytime we walk on stage and everytime the director says “action!”.
I just came out of a 15 minute audition which I spent more than a year preparing for. Imagine cramming all of that work into 15 minutes. If not the pressure to deliver, then the physiological impact on your body, the intellectual stress when you are given acting notes to deliver back immediately or the emotional stress of keeping it all together. It took me 2 hours afterwards to get my body to relax and to stop perspiring.
It definitely cost me something. But it also gave me so much more.
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My name is Eu Jin. I recently embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. A big supporter of personal growth, I also dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste. If you would like to find out more or share your thoughts, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you very much!