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May 2021

playing emotions

Playing emotions and moods in acting

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Do you ever find that you’re playing the emotion or mood of a scene and catch yourself acting up a storm?   That’s because, as counter intuitive as it may seem, actors shouldn’t focus on emotion.

Perhaps you’re working a scene and subconsciously imagining the result – or maybe you even try it out in the mirror. 

Well, you think, my character is pretty angry here, the text is in ALL CAPS so I should look and sound angry when I deliver this.  Maybe my face should scrunch up and my eyebrows should furrow.  I’ll definitely YELL!

This is the big trap I literally lead actors out of every day:  trying to play mood. (Which as my teacher Larry Moss used to say, mood spelled backwards is DOOM.)

What should you do instead?

Leave the mood and all description words of your performance to the audience.  It’s their job to process and interpret your work and how they’ll experience the story. 

But for you, playing a mood isn’t active.  You aren’t trying to get anything from them when you play emotion — and trying to get something is what we do in life.  Right?  In fact, we are usually trying not to feel emotion.

Try focusing on what your character is doing to the other person for a desired response.  Look for transitive verbs.

Maybe you are shaming the other character or chastising them, or smacking them.  Those juicy actions will help you stay in a powerful feedback loop of action, curiosity and attention.  Those actions will free you and ground you and give you beautiful specificity.  

The experience of watching an actor play emotion is confusing, acty and generally a snoozefest.

CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION

Student: I guess I need to portray this better, but I was trying to act—not act, but I was being almost like disgusted, like she’s inferior to me because she lets guys feel her up, and so I need to figure out like an action word for that.

Sarah: Yes! An action word! Cuz if you play disgusted, it’ll look like you’re acting, because you’re giving us, you’re giving us what you want the audience to experience. The audience experiences disgust.

Student: Maybe like…what’s another word for talk down to? Belittle?

Sarah: Belittle, good. Let’s look up belittle. We’ve got “cheapen,” “demean,” “discredit,” “humiliate” is really good, “patronize,” “knock.”

Student: I think humiliate is good.

Sarah: Feels really right on there, yeah. Let’s just back it up. Let’s actually try humiliate.

Student: “Why would you do it? I don’t know why you’d do it. But I know why they’d do it. So they can feel you or something. And you let them.”

Sarah: Yes, that’s so much more on her! It’s so much better! That’s a totally different moment now. Cuz you were trying to affect her. But it’s so good, what you discovered in that moment was a huge learning moment, which is like, good, maybe I want her to feel, I want her to feel…what?

Student: Humiliated.

Sarah: Yeah, humiliated, so you can get behind that.

what do I do with beats?

Doing your beats justice

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How familiar are you with breaking down beats?  It’s a fantastic tool.  Sometimes the text will literally tell you to take a beat, meaning a pause, but much of the time it’s up to you to figure out where the beats are.

So what is a beat in acting?

A beat is, in its simplest form, a moment of transition — or a shift to a new idea.  And it’s not just something to mark in your script (though you should write it down!), it’s a place where something happens.

Is there a new obstacle?  Are you trying a new action or tactic?  Is the other character giving you something totally new?  Have you learned new information?

CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION

Sarah: What is a beat in acting?

Ashley: Maybe like a pause in the rhythm of the way that they’re speaking?

Sarah: Yeah, that’s kind of part of it. How would you find it in the script?

Ashley: It could depend on the character. Cuz Gwen is very fast and she’s very responsive whereas other characters could be more slow-paced like responding, so it depends.

Sarah: Yeah, so I know what you mean. For these, for your scene work, what you want to look for…sometimes like I said it’ll just tell you when to take a pause, it’ll either say “pause” or “beat” or, you know, “she thinks.” And it’s good sometimes for your visual, like as you’re working, to  like draw a big line across the page right there. To be like: there is a change.

Cuz it’s not just simply about- I need to pause.  It’s a clue to you that you have to do something in that pause. Because we don’t just pause for pausing sake, we pause for a reason.  Just like in any acting scene, we don’t move our bodies or cross—like if you’re in a play and you have to cross the stage, never cross the stage unless you know why you’re crossing the stage. Same thing goes with when you’re singing.  Destination on the stage is for emotional reasons.  If I’m singing about something where I feel like I’m trying to get closer to someone, I might take a step forward, right?  In a play, I may need to get away. It may feel too dangerous to be that close to that person right there if you’re working in a play or you’re working on set and the director tells you you have to go do a certain thing, you need to justify it always.  And the same thing is true for the beats.

Beats happen because there is a transition. That’s really what a beat is. A beat is a transition where it’s a new idea, a new section.  So the beats are where the transitions happen, and it’s really important to know where they happen, because there’s acting moments on all the transitions.  There’s acting moments and opportunities, and casting directors and directors and even audiences love, we don’t know it consciously, but we love watching actors make transitions. It’s very exciting to watch when it’s done well.

So that’ll really help you with those acting moments of the transitions, but also, it’s where you’re in a new idea, where everything is…your actions will all support each other in those beats, right, depending on what beat you’re in. Is that kind of making sense? Do you feel more clear about what a beat is?

Ashley: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s good for you to figure those out, where they are in your scenes, and mark them very clearly, so you can transition, transition, transition, transition.

card reads are you working too hard to play emotion?

Fighting against emotion to find emotion

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When you have an emotional scene to prep for, are you working FOR the emotion?

It’s super common to work to find emotion because emotional scenes can produce a lot of anxiety — but sometimes the fear of not getting there drives you to push for the feeling which ultimately stands in your way of discovery.

So how do you get there??

CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION

[in scene]

Hugues: I wasn’t expecting…after everything, I just put it in my mind that he was…

Sarah: Yeah, and that can probably just be left alone that line, a little bit more.

[in scene]

Hugues: I’m sorry.

Reader: That’s alright. You don’t owe me anything.

Sarah: It just feels a little bit in that section, and this is a slight adjustment, cuz it’s not bad work, we’re just talking, you know, we’re always talking the next level, right, we’re always talking the next level. It feels a little bit in this section like working for emotion rather than allowing it and fighting it to get that idea out, to get the thing out that he needs to say next.

Hugues: Right.

Sarah: He’s not trying to feel it, he’s trying to get through the moment and not break down. How does it feel to work against the emotion, to push it down, to try not to be overwhelmed by it?

Hugues: It feels, um…it feels like you’re actually moving as opposed to, you know, you just thinking you’re moving.

Sarah: What I notice is that it started to feel like, the emotional circumstances actually affected you more the more you worked against it.

Hugues: Yeah, yeah, yes, I did feel that, too.

Sarah: So the more you can keep doing that in rehearsal…don’t try to get the results of the emotion. Don’t go for the results of the emotion. That’s when all your extra business comes in, showing how distressed he is versus fighting it. Fighting it, fighting it, fighting it, fighting it, fighting it.