Diderot's paradox of acting
“Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made,” said George Burns. This is a variation of the ‘paradox of...
The god of theatre
In Ancient Greece, plays were performed in honour of Dionysos – god of wine, of the mask, and of theatre. Above all, Dionysos is the god...
What is acting? (2)
Was Thespis right? Is acting just a kind of ‘play’ (we refer to ‘play acting’ after all)? According to legend, Thespis was the inventor...
What is acting? (1)
Crudely, acting could be defined as ‘pretending to be someone else’. But that sounds like dishonesty, so we'd need to add that acting...
I am NOT my brain
In 2014, the neuroscientist Dick Swaab published a book with the title, We Are Our Brains. To my mind, that such a claim could be...
Acting vs performance?
Often, in developing a role, when a student actor really starts to act – when they start to truly become the character – they also cease...
The architecture of the self 2
Here’s a second way in which the ‘self’ can be seen as both physical and external. (For the first, see here.) There’s an exercise for...
The actor's 'instrument'
The actor is exposed onstage and in a certain metaphorical sense ‘naked’. This may be part of the reason why so many books about acting...
The rise and fall of 'power posing'
In 2010, Amy Cuddy, a Social Psychologist at Harvard Business School, was one of the authors of a scientific paper called “Power posing:...
The architecture of the self 1
You don’t stop – or start – at your skin. Your personal space, what Laban called your kinesphere, what I call your ‘psychological skin’ –...