이미지, 상상, 그리고 반응-배우의 상상력과 연기-

Abstract

Acting is not about action, but about reaction. All the phony exaggerated acting results from self-centered actors’ obsession with action without really listening to whatever stimuli are there around them. All the living things, including human beings, are bound to breathe and react as long as they live, which should be reflected into the training of actors and acting. We live our lives without practice. Life is always an improvisation, a succession of reactions made possible by senses and imagination on which each actor thrives. Reaction is preceded by sensory perceptions, which are all images. The imagination compare these images from the senses with those reserved in memory, a reservoir of images, so that the imagination can interpret the images and find any meaning from them. Out of these unceasing processes of imagination, there come out words and behaviors and actions. In that respect, everything that a character does, including thinking and feeling, is a reaction. Memory is like a library with a huge collection of condensed images. Some of these images are prohibited and blocked and deny the access of imagination. For actors, who are compelled to live different lives of characters through their own body and mind, free access to all the images in the library is a must to fully experience and express characters’ experiences. Otherwise, his imagination would get crippled and his creation would be only superficial, unreal and untruthful. Without memory, an actor could not see and so he could not respond. No memory, no imagination. Character exists only in lines on the pages of a script. Memory is a soul that an actor must bring to any character he portrays, which makes acting a beautiful art. Any human experience begins with sensory perceptions. The same with characters’ experiences. That is why acting should start with seeing, listening, smelling, tasting, and touching imaginary objects so that actors can react. As Declan Donnellan said, “you are what you see.” When an actor really sees something in the imaginary circumstances on stage, his imagination come to work arduously, which in turn will enable him to become the character without any self-conscious anxieties, without any tension, and without any desire to express. Instead, only is there the freedom of flowing from reaction to reaction.