When I started at UCLA I was suspicious of these practices. They seemed to be exclusively relied upon by a difficult acting teacher of mine, one who seemed to turn every scene into A Streetcar Named Desire.
This is a style of acting that can be very powerful, but is certainly not suitable to every situation or style of film. One of the things I learned in that class is that a director always gets what he wants. If a director does his director’s notes you can see where his performances come from. Whether that is good or bad depends the clarity and originality of his vision, as well as his ability to convey that vision to actors.
Sense memory and personalization were a means by which my teacher would bring actors into a drugged emotional state, where they would play everything as if they had come from a funeral. I grew a great dislike for this kind of acting and vowed not to use it with my actors. I worked with them from the outside in, establishing clear goals and actions to play. We shaped the blocking together.
Still a level lacked in my performances, which were very praised. After presenting my piece, the theatrical version of my Bergman Scene, to the excellent Barry Primus, he looked at my actors for a while. He asked me some questions, and praised my analytical capabilities. I wasn’t making it personal for the actors though. Oh boy, I thought, here comes “Stella! Stella!”
That was not how it worked though. Barry took my actresses through a relaxation exercise (it was finals week) and then we played a game where we tried to be as silly as possible to relax them. He then did a personalization. It brought that level of personal emotion that the performance had been lacking up until then. It was a different take, but a powerful one nonetheless.
A book that I am reading right now is Truth by Susan Batson. She was Nicole Kidman’s coach on the Hours and Tom Cruise’s on Magnolia. Two very solid performances.
She has the most succinct descriptions of Sense Memory and Personalization I have seen.
For Sense Memory:
The actor thinks back through her memory to remember an event that carries an emotional sensation like one in a script. The actor must then ask these questions regarding the memory.
How long ago did the event take place?
What was the time of year?
What was the time of day?
What was I wearing?
What did I need in that moment?
What was the place? Outdoors, indoors, temperature, smells, sounds?
What is the one thing about the place that I will never forget?
Was there a significant person there with me? What was their strongest physical feature? Their strongest human quality? Something the person said or did that I will never forget? Something I wanted to say to them but didn’t?
Was there a certain behavior I kept repeating?
Was there anything I wanted to say or do at that time but didn’t know? Release it now.
Why didn’t I say or do it then?
Personalization is a means of creating strong feelings toward a real person for your life, say an ex boyfriend, when you’re acting with someone who is not that person:
Begin the personalization exercise by examining a person from your life whom you associate with an unfulfilled need. Ask yourself to remember:
The strongest physical feature of that person.
The strongest human quality of the person.
Was there something the person said or did that I will never forget?
Is there something I always wanted to say or do to the person that I never said or did?
This is heavy stuff though, and not to be used lightly. There is more explanation in Batson’s book, as well as in Delia Salvi’s Friendly Enemies.
Sense Memory and Personalization
When I started at UCLA I was suspicious of these practices. They seemed to be exclusively relied upon by a difficult acting teacher of mine, one who seemed to turn every scene into A Streetcar Named Desire.
This is a style of acting that can be very powerful, but is certainly not suitable to every situation or style of film. One of the things I learned in that class is that a director always gets what he wants. If a director does his director’s notes you can see where his performances come from. Whether that is good or bad depends the clarity and originality of his vision, as well as his ability to convey that vision to actors.
Sense memory and personalization were a means by which my teacher would bring actors into a drugged emotional state, where they would play everything as if they had come from a funeral. I grew a great dislike for this kind of acting and vowed not to use it with my actors. I worked with them from the outside in, establishing clear goals and actions to play. We shaped the blocking together.
Still a level lacked in my performances, which were very praised. After presenting my piece, the theatrical version of my Bergman Scene, to the excellent Barry Primus, he looked at my actors for a while. He asked me some questions, and praised my analytical capabilities. I wasn’t making it personal for the actors though. Oh boy, I thought, here comes “Stella! Stella!”
That was not how it worked though. Barry took my actresses through a relaxation exercise (it was finals week) and then we played a game where we tried to be as silly as possible to relax them. He then did a personalization. It brought that level of personal emotion that the performance had been lacking up until then. It was a different take, but a powerful one nonetheless.
A book that I am reading right now is Truth by Susan Batson. She was Nicole Kidman’s coach on the Hours and Tom Cruise’s on Magnolia. Two very solid performances.
She has the most succinct descriptions of Sense Memory and Personalization I have seen.
For Sense Memory:
Personalization is a means of creating strong feelings toward a real person for your life, say an ex boyfriend, when you’re acting with someone who is not that person:
This is heavy stuff though, and not to be used lightly. There is more explanation in Batson’s book, as well as in Delia Salvi’s Friendly Enemies.