The Great Acting Blog: “The Director Must Allow The Actor To Rebel”
Following on from yesterday’s post about how acting is a form of rebellion, we can now see why the creative decision-making for a performance must finally rest with the actor himself and not with the director.
Working on a script or simply improvising, the needs of the scene provide the actor with opportunities to decide what to include and what to exclude. Each scene is filtered through the actor’s own creative individuality, he makes decisions based on what it means to him. These acts of deciding on what to include and exclude in his performance, are opportunities to create his own arrangement of the world, and so rebel – the act of deciding is an act of rebellion, and gives the actor that sense of freedom he craves.
However, if the director denies the actor these opportunities to make creative decisions, imposing his own view instead, then the director robs the actor of his act of rebellion and so encroaches on his freedom. As a result, the energy and creativity will drain from the actor’s work, and he will be diminished.
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