Abstract
The primary purpose of this chapter is to show how the actor’s job of bringing the scripted events of a drama to vibrant life onstage is necessarily a creative endeavor. A detailed analysis of the acting process will reveal that, from the first reading to the final public performance, an actor must create the “live” aspect of the play in terms of amplifying and communicating the deep meaning he or she finds behind the literal words. This communication is accomplished by the actor’s emotional conviction, vocal inflection, body language, and all other channels of communication. The training methods used in higher education, designed to produce this ability, are herein described along with some methodological variations. A secondary purpose of this chapter is to review some theories of creativity offered by a number of prominent researchers and to show how precisely these theories can be applied to the main elements of the acting process.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The examples given here hold true for realistic theatre in which the actors’ intentions match those of the character. For example, in the dining room scene of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, Anne Bancroft’s/Annie Sullivan’s doable verbal phrase was probably something like ‘to force this child to bend to my will.’ Conversely, in a farce or a comedy sketch, a typical doable verbal phrase might be to delight the audience with this over-exaggerated gesture.
- 2.
At first glance, these actions seem less specific than our earlier examples of the type of “doable verbs” that would be helpful to actors in maintaining their reality of doing onstage. However, as already pointed out, actors differ and we believe that, for many of them, these terms certainly could be considered “doable.” For example, greedily drinking from the bottle after saying “This is how I solve my problems” could lead an actor to a feeling that he is trying to force the other actor/character to recognize just how insoluble his drinking problem is.
- 3.
This excellent pedagogical device was used for a different population almost a century ago. In the 1920s, there were literally over a hundred markets for short stories but they paid so little that writers had to churn out dozens of stories each month to make a bare living. A book called PLOTTO (William Wallace Cook 1924) offered hundreds of lists of protagonists, antagonists, and motives from which writers would randomly pick one from Column A and one from column B, etc. PLOTTO is in print to this day.
References
Amabile, T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1154–1184.
Barton, R. (2009). Acting: Onstage and off (5th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Beghetto, R. (2017). Creativity in teaching. In J. Kaufman, V. Glăveanu, & J. Baer (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of creativity across domains (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 549–564). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beghetto, R. A., & Kaufman, J. C. (2016). Theories of creativity. In J. A. Plucke (Ed.), Creativity and innovation: Current understandings and debates. Waco: Prufrock.
Benedetti, R. (2015). The actor in you. New York: Pearson Education.
Black, D. (1995). The magic of theatre. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company.
Bruder, M., Cohn, L. M., Olneck, M., Pollack, N., Previto, R., & Zigler, S. (1986). A practical handbook for the actor. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Caine, M. (1990). Acting in film: An actor's take on movie making. New York: Applause Theatre Books.
Cohen, R. (1978). Acting power. Palo Alto: Mayfield Publishing.
Cook, W.W. (1924/2011). Plotto. Portland: Tin House Books.
Csíkszentmihályi, M. (2006). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Perennial.
Dewett, T. (2007). Linking intrinsic motivation, risk taking, and employee creativity in an R&D environment. R&D Management, 37(3), 197–208.
Forgeard, M. J. C., & Mecklenburg, A. C. (2013). The two dimensions of motivation and a reciprocal model of the creative process. Review of General Psychology, 17(3), 255–266.
Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (2002). Grounding language in action. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 558–565.
Gordon, M. (1987). The Stanislavsky technique: Russia. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers.
Kaufman, J. C., & Baer, J. (2005). The amusement park theory of creativity. In J. C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity across domains: Faces of the muse (pp. 20–47). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kaufman, J. C., & Beghtto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13, 1–12.
Kozbelt, A., Beghetto, R. A., & Runco, M. A. (2010). Theories of creativity. In J. C. Kaufman & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of creativity (pp. 20–47). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Meisner, S., & Longwell, D. (1987). Sanford Meisner on acting. New York: Vintage Books.
Noice, H., & Noice, T. (1994). Analyzing the role preparation of a professional actor. Discourse Processes, 18, 345–369.
Noice, H., & Noice, T. (1996). Two approaches to learning a theatrical script. Memory, 4(1), 1–17.
Noice, T., & Noice, H. (2002). A review of recent research on the expertise of professional actors. High Ability Studies, 13(1), 7–19.
Noice, T., & Noice, H. (2004). A cognitive learning principle derived from the role acquisition strategies of professional actors. Cognitive Technology, 9(1), 34–39.
Noice, T., & Noice, H. (2006). A theatrical intervention to improve cognition in intact residents of long term care facilities. Clinical Gerontologist Journal, 29(3), 59–75.
Noice, H., & Noice, T. (2009). An arts intervention for older adults living in subsidized retirement homes. Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, 1, 1–24.
Noice, H., & Noice, T. (2013). Extending the reach of an evidence-based theatrical intervention. Experimental Aging Research, 39(4), 398–418.
Pfeiffer, F. M., Bauer, R. E., Borgelt, S., Burgoyne, S., Grant, S., Hunt, H. K., Pardoe, J. J., & Schmidt, D. C. (2017). When theater comes to engineering design: Oh how creative they can be. Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, 139(07), 1–4.
Platt, J., & Spivack, G. (1975). The MEPS procedure manual. In Community Mental Health/Mental Retardation Center. Philadelphia: Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital.
Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Educational Psychology, 39, 83–96.
Sawyer, K. (2012). The cognitive neuroscience of creativity: A critical review. The Creativity Research Journal, 73(2), 137–154.
Stanislavski, K. (1924). My life in art (J. J. Robbins, Trans.). New York: Little Brown and Company.
Stanislavski, K. (2008). An actor’s work: A student’s diary (J. Benedetti, Ed., Trans.). New York: Routledge.
Sternberg, R. J. (2012). The assessment of creativity: An investment-based approach. Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 3–12.
Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. Pasadena: Solis Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Noice, T., Noice, H. (2018). The Actor’s Real Role on the Production Team. In: Burgoyne, S. (eds) Creativity in Theatre. Creativity Theory and Action in Education, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78928-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78928-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78927-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78928-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)