Metaphors

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1

<p>I had been trained in the tradition of acting called “psychological realism”. A basic tenet of psychological realism is that characters live inside of you and that you create a lifelike portrayal of the character through a process of realizing your own similarity to the character. When I later became a teacher of acting, I began to become more and more troubled by the self-oriented method. I began to look for ways to engage my students in putting themselves in other people’s shoes. This went against the grain of psychological realism tradition, which was to get the character to walk in the actor’s shoes. It became less and less interesting intellectually to bring the dramatic literature of the world into a classroom of people in their late teens and twenties, and to explore it within the framework of their real lives. Aesthetically it seemed limited, because most of the time the characters all sounded the same. Most characters spoke somewhere inside the rhythmic range of the students. More troubling was that this method left an important bridge out of acting. The spirit of acting is the travel from the self to the other. This “self-based” method seemed to come to a spiritual halt. It saw the self as the ultimate home of the character. To me, the search for character is constantly in motion. It is a quest that moves back and forth the self and the other. </p>

<p>I needed evidence that you could find a character’s psychological reality by “inhabiting” that character’s words. I needed evidence of the limitations of basing a character on a series of metaphors from an actor’s real life. I wanted to develop an alternative to the self-based technique, a technique that would begin with the other and come to the self, a technique that would empower the other to find the actor rather than the other way around.</p>

<p>The “metaphors” are best described as
A) Private misgivings
B) Objective observations
C) Abstract equations
D) Memorable phrases
E) Personal comparisons.</p>

<p>Why is it objective observations?</p>

<p>Is it because of “you create a lifelike portrayal of the character through a process of realizing your own similarity to the character…get the character to walk in the actor’s shoes…”</p>

2

<p>Actually, I can’t explain why this should be B) Objective observations. It seems to me that it should be E) Personal comparisons. The essence of the excerpt is a critical view of psychological realism as an approach to acting. According to the material provided, the technique of psychological realism relies on an actor’s finding similarities to the character in himself/herself. The critic is looking to prove the limitations of this approach, that is, “the limitations of basing a character on . . . metaphors from the actor’s real life.”</p>

<p>I am pretty sure that the “metaphors” refer to the comparisons that the actor makes between his/her own life, and that of the character. So if the answer given is really B, I’d argue that it is a typo.</p>

<p>Sorry I can’t provide more help.</p>

3

<p>I also feel like E is the better answer, but I’m pretty bad at CR. The only thing I can think of for B is that she wants to observe the actor’s real life with the objective of using it for this technique.</p>

<p>I really don’t know and I’d love to know the real explanation for this! I’m such a fail when it comes to critical reading! xD</p>

4

<p>thanks everyone - i hope its a typo too!!</p>