The Great Acting Blog: “Focus On Action Not Emotion”

The Great Acting Blog: “Focus On Action Not Emotion”

Focussing on emotions in the scene really only succeeds in making us feel self-conscious. If the desired emotion is not present, then we engage in neurotic efforts to “produce” it. And when the magic emotion does appear, we remain self-conscious while we try to maintain it, but if it dissipates then we go back to square one. So focussing on emotions actually blocks us from doing the scene, blocks our creativity and prevents our performance from taking flight.

Don’t worry about emotion, focus on doing the action instead. Truthful emotion will be organically created by these attempts to do the action. The actor need not concern himself with emotion, only action.

Similarly in life, we can invest great time and energy in trying to change our mood whenever we are not in the desired one. By doing so however, we are putting our focus in the wrong place – it should be on doing tasks, doing our work, then we are no longer concerned with whether we are feeling tired or not, positive or not, whether we are in the right state or not. We function more effectively.

The rules of life are the same on stage or off,  in front of the camera or not. Focus on action not emotion.