Feelings and Emotions: An Acting Intervention

Actors? Take a seat. Get comfy. Help yourself to donuts and coffee if you like. We need to have a talk. Nobody here is judging, and everything being said is coming from a place of deep love and respect. However, we need to tackle this obsession with “feelings” and “emotions”, on stage or screen. It might feel good—it might even feel right in the moment! But letting your work be driven by emotion is doing you no favours, and it’s better you hear it in a safe space, from the people who care about you most, than out there in the industry.

Many actors obsess over experiencing emotions in their performance, or at least conveying the feeling of their character/s to the audience. While this might seem like an important connection to make, it often results in a performance too focused on the actor, rather than the wants of the character in a given scene. Emotions in acting should be viewed as a by-product of a character’s thoughts and deeds, rather than the endgame of the performer portraying them. 

We’re tackling this contentious topic today for two main reasons. First up: letting go of emotions and feeling as an actor will free you up to do better, more truthful work. (We’ll explain exactly how in detail below.) The second reason is far more important. Some actors worry that if they lack an emotional connection to a character and that character’s feelings, they’ll fail to connect with the part—and therefore cannot play it. This is simply untrue. You exist to serve the character’s wants, not their feels. Any other opinion is misguided at best, self-indulgent at worst.

Acting Emotions

So what’s the big, you might be asking? Humans have emotions, why not characters? And if the emotional journey of a character is important, then why not use it to navigate a scene: the part where they’re happy, the part where they’re upset, the part where they get mad and decide to get even?

The problem is that emotions are a result of stimuli, not stimulus themselves. Something happens: therefore we feel. We do something in response to that feeling: we feel something else. Feeling is the byproduct of another person’s actions, or our own actions towards others. Of course they’re important! But they’re also, by definition, passive. Emotions are a state of being, rather than what happens next—which means they’re unable to drive a narrative forward.

This is why it’s not enough for a character to go onstage or screen and simply “be sad” or “be angry”. No matter how raw and real their performance mioght feel, they’re not actually moving the story along. Anybody who’s suffered an actor aimlessly crying or screaming through a scene in an acting class knows what a boring, self-indulgent exercise this kind of acting is. And the worst part is, they think they’re nailing it…

One of our incredible StageMilk contributors, actor Jack Crumlin, wrote an excellent article titled “How to act “Emotionally””. Early on, he states: “Emotion is an obstacle, not an objective.” Sure, your character can feel something. But rather than showing us their emotions, show us what they plan to do about it. That‘s the drama the audience paid money to see.

Harnessing Emotions

So how can we turn our awareness of a character’s feelings and emotions into an asset, rather than a liability? We can use emotions to inform a character’s actions and tactics within a given scene. Here’s an example usin “Blue Cardigan”, one of our popular short monologues for actors right here on StageMilk:

Grieving widow Charlotte shows up at the door of her deceased husband’s lover Helen. She’s there—so she says—to ask if her husband might have left his blue cardigan there before he died and, if so, could she have it back? (Take a look at the full text available here.)

It’s a scene with plenty of wiggle room in terms of characterisation and circumstance. There is subtext galore to allow an actor to do just about anything they like with the words on the page. Is it an emotional piece? Absolutely: how could Charlotte not be emotional at a time like this—and in this particular situation! But this is the exact moment to get specific about the scene, rather than make sweeping assumptions based on surface emotional cues.

How does grief manifest in Charlotte? As the actor playing her, you have to answer that in a way that speaks to her and nobody else—especially not yourself. Does grief make her feel regretful? Bitter? Perhaps even relieved?  No two people are guaranteed to feel the same way in the same situation. No two people react to emotions in the same way. In your own life, you might shut down completely when dealing with loss. But when you play Charlotte, you might conclude that she uses the exact same state to compel her to act: perhaps driven by anger for Helen and her husband’s shared infidelity.

By all means identify the emotions of your character. Then think about how they might use their emotions as fuel to pursue their objective—aided by tactics that reflect how they feel.

Feeling as the Character vs. Feeling as the Actor

This brings us to the heart of the argument for “doing” rather than “feeling”. What do you do as an actor if you can’t equate your personal feelings to those of the character? What if the way they feel about a person or situation is totally foreign to you, or they make a choice based on feeling that you just can’t get behind?

If you focus on the actions of that character, you don’t have to share an emotional affinity. In “Blue Cardigan”, you don’t need to have experienced the grief of losing a spouse, or even the shame of being cheated on. When you let yourself be driven by the action of the character, all you need to do is focus on Charlotte’s want: her goal to get the cardigan back (and possibly confront Helen in the process.) Her emotions might allow you to empathise with her, to contextualise her actions—to understand her motivation—but they’re secondary to you showing up at that front door with the main goal of the scene in mind.

Remember: audiences are there to see what a character does, not how they feel. In situations where you can relate to the feelings and emotions of a character, you might find yourself at an advantage in portraying their experience. But only so far as their responses to these emotions mirror your own. Otherwise, it’s up to your best guess. Your imagination. Your ability to act.

So if you lack what you perceive to be an emotional connection to a character, don’t think for a second that you’re unable to play them. Crack them open and work out what makes them tick: be a detective, be an empathy machine! We don’t ask actors to be convicted murderers to guest-star on Law and Order. Why should any other role be any different?

“Raw” and “Realistic” Acting

Another reason actors cling to emotions and feelings is to chase this idea of being “emotionally raw” in their performance. We often equate this descriptor with truthful and realistic acting, as though an actor is at their best when the line between performer and role is hopelessly blurred.

The truth is: “emotionally raw” is as much a marketing term as it is a descriptor of an actor’s work or process. “Emotionally raw acting has none of the fancy tricks of a person pretending, they’re actually experiencing these thoughts and feelings! The tears are real, the actor does all their own stunts and eats the cockroach on camera every take!”

But if you can’t make the distinction between an actor and the character they play, that isn’t good work—that’s the actor winging it: they’re wilfully giving up or losing control, which may prove extremely emotionally damaging for them. It’s the reason method acting is so misunderstood. Because at some point, people decided that ‘method’ meant letting go rather than maintaining control.

Do you want your performance to look real and seem truthful? Don’t have big feels and wing it: perform script analysis, work out what your character wants and plot how they plan to achieve their goal/s in the way that suits them and only them. Actors who do that deliver good and honest work. Actors caught up in being “emotionally raw” tend to care more about their own experience than that of the audience watching them.

Conclusion

Okay: tough talk over. We hope we haven’t been too harsh on this subject—and that we haven’t come across like a legion of merciless automotons! The truth is, feelings and emotions are powerful tools for actors—they enable you to tap into your instincts about the human condition, and better explore the characters you bring to life.

They just can’t be the only tools. When actors get it into their heads that this is the case, their work becomes sloppy, impulsive and indulgent. And that’s to say nothing of the actors who struggle with emotions and feelings in their own lives, who might conclude that acting as a craft and career is beyond them.

Feel whatever you need to feel. Feel whatever your characters feel, if you can. And then? Let it spur you on to action and answer the most important question in all of drama: what happens next?

Good luck…