Acting is Predicting
Acting is—
o Believing—“I AM the character.”
o Feeling—“I feel the feelings of the character.”
o Imagining—“It is ‘as if’ I am in the circumstances of the character.”
o Indicating—“I explain the character to the audience.”
o Demonstrating—“I step in and out of the theatrical illusion to help to reveal choices to an audience.”
o Doing—“I do the things the audience imputes as done by a character.”
o Predicting—“I predict threat/opportunity and act upon that prediction with behaviors coherent to an audience within the context of the imaginary event.”
Emotions and Acting
In her book, How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett states that all emotions are constructed.
The theory of constructed emotion explains how you experience and perceive emotion in the absence of any consistent, biological fingerprints in the face, body, or brain. Your brain continually predicts and simulates all the sensory imports from inside and outside your body, so it understands what they mean and what to do about them. These predications travel through your cortex, cascading from the body-budgeting circuitry in your interoceptive network to your primary sensory cortices, to create distributed, brain-wide simulations, each of which is an instance of a concept. The simulation that’s closest to your actual situation is the winner that becomes your experience, and if it’s an instance of an emotion concept, then you experience emotion. This whole process occurs, with the help of your control network, in the service of regulating your body budget to keep you alive and healthy. In the process, you impact the body budgets of those around you, to help you survive to propagate your genes into the next generation. This is how brains and bodies create social reality. This is also how emotions become real. (152)
Feldman Barrett (F-B) admits that some of this is “reasoned speculation.” (152) But the theory does account for much of the phenomenon of emotions. Emotions, asserts F-B, are socially constructed and the brain "predicts," and initiates actions based on that prediction. So, acting isn’t re-acting. Acting is predicting.
Her theory recalls that of Niko Fridja’s cognitive theory of emotions, which posits that emotions are “states of action readiness.”(Fridja, 1986, pg. 71) Of course, this theory appeals to acting and actor training. (F-B cites Fridja in her bibliography.) In any case, I concur with F-B that emotions don’t have “fingerprints.” Emotions vary almost infinitely because they arise contingently moment to moment. As she says,
a constructionist view considers an emotion category as a group of highly variable instances that are treated as similar in the service of some goal, but whose ANS features can vary from instance to instance in a situated way (as a person’s brain tailors their physical responses to the environment in the service of that goal).
In a similar vein, her concept of degeneracy is also “actor friendly.” A performance is never quite the same night after night, due to the simple fact that the situation has changed. There are general similarities, to be sure--the goals, or tasks, that the actor performs remain consistent (mostly). But how they are accomplished varies at least slightly from performance to performance. The problem with most research and most criticism/thinking about acting is that it is observer-based and leads necessarily to judgment. Directors and playwrights like to give “results” such as anger, shame, “she cries.” But good actors don’t bother with that. Actors look for action that may (or may not) give rise to those results.[i]
On page 92, we hit actor pay dirt with a description of emotions as “goal-related concepts.” The actor is always attempting to accomplish a task (reach a goal). However, F-B then gives example of a goal—communicating what it felt like to experience the flight she just took. But that is only what it appears to be on the outside. For actors, goals are never simply “to communicate”—that’s just a means to an end. The real end might be better expressed as “to have my feelings verified.” It’s as she says a case of predication error correction. The friend needed her feelings validated/verified so that her action-readiness routine is validated. Was she “correct” in her feelings of fear (and so the action routine was appropriately engaged)? It's like the question we all sometimes ask, “Am I crazy or did X just happen?”
On page 141 F-B describes “the Potato chip experience.” This is art. Per Langer, "the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling." If you aren't familiar with her work, I highly recommend it. Feeling and Form is her most famous contribution. It's a bit out of date in some ways, but in others it is quite far-seeing. Her last work, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling takes a path similar to How Emotions Are Made. It's massive and very well researched, but now is over 40 years out of date as far as the science is concerned. That said, I think you'll find much there to admire, not the least of which is the rigor of her thinking.
On 142 F-B states that in order to feel an emotion you have to have the concept. That seems tautological. Unnamed feelings exist in the physical world, but perhaps they might be more usefully described as inchoate or nascent--awaiting a form that gives it greater meaning and generates a more specific action-readiness. But some kind of action readiness is prompted by the pattern of sensory signals, whether we can name it or not. The startle reflex in infants--there is some associated emotion in that, isn't there, even though they don't have an emotional concept? Or is it just a startle--a series of behaviors unassociated with even a nascent emotion.
Emotional granularity is greatly improved via art. F-B mentions going to see a film or reading a book, but I think there's more to it. I agree with Langer that the art experience's raison d'etre is to provide greater emotional granularity. In Stephen Davies' book, The Artful Species, he examines the arguments regarding art-making's place in evolution (adaptation, technology, spandrel). You can guess where my alliance lies. In any case, I think art is THE way to develop the emotional vocabulary, not only within, but across, cultures. And arts persistence across cultures and over time indicates to me some evolutionary underpinning. But that may be the essentialist in me talking.
The implications of F-B’s theory to actor training and theatre are very interesting. If we are architects of our experience, then acting is NOT reacting. Rather, acting is a performance of the creation of experience--our moment-to-moment construction of experience made perceivable to an audience.
Theatre provides living examples of creating one's own reality
Theatre also enlarges your emotional vocabulary by creating a temporarily cohesive group that collectively experiences an emotional concept set that did not previously exist. That Hamlet or Hamilton feeling. As Langer says, a form symbolic of human feeling.
Truth, Belief, Coherence
Much of actor training from Stanislavski on involves assessing the apparent “truthfulness” of a performance. Truthfulness is defined as the teacher and audience recognizing the effectiveness of the progression of acts to accomplish a task. If the acts make sense—that is, if the acts are organized so that the task reveals itself in such a way as to maintain our credulity—then a performance is assessed as “truthful.” Actions we deem coherent (or as usually stated, acts found truthful or believable) are associated with urges to approach. Acts we find incoherent (untruthful, unbelievable in the acting classroom parlance) are associated with urges to withdrawal. For the actor, all this offers insights into effective playing of actions (is it "believable")— and it usually boils down to the problem of too little, too much, or too general energy harnessed to accomplish a task (an intentional act). In experiments by Iacobonni, it was demonstrated that “observation of the mimed actions showed an analogous activation pattern that was however limited to the frontal lobe.” (119) Thus, it was demonstrated that representational acts—showing, not doing—activate neurons differently and the MNs less so. Pantomime will provoke lower activity in MNs. Evolutionarily speaking, it is important to be able to distinguish between REAL threats/opportunities and PLAY threats/opportunities. Iacobonni demonstrated experimentally that “It is always the most natural motor intention, most strongly rooted in the basic repertoire of our vocabulary of acts, which tends to prevail.” (130)
“Be specific!” is a command used by teachers of acting and directors. Part of actor training is to help the actor play specific actions and attempt to accomplish clear tasks. So, we offer lists of verbs and examples of goals or intentions a character may have, and the teacher and students watch performances to see if that is happening. The MN system theory provides us with new vocabulary to describe certain problems encountered in the acting class or rehearsal hall. For example, over-acting (indicating, showing/not doing, or mugging) might be defined as unintentional acts that fail to optimally activate MN firing, which result in urges to withdraw. Acting teachers and directors might well eschew words such as truthful and believable (and “be specific!”). What is actually occurring when discussing believable action is that teachers and directors have developed their action anticipation (via the MNS) over time to more effectively discern between coherent and incoherent acts that prompt urges to approach and withdraw. What is felt is that urge, highly sensitive due to exposure to the suite of behaviors involved in performance. We may CALL that urge believable, but really the move toward or away from the actor performing is more aptly described as a reaction to the coherence of an act.
What we are teaching then is sensitivity to those urges, and adjusting acts so they are more focused, and the intention is clearer.
For the audience, they too come to the theatre with varying degrees of sensitivity to their urges to approach and withdraw. They are already pre-disposed to understand acts at the pre-conscious level, but when faced with ambiguous acts (over-acting, under-acting, indicating, etc.) the acts may no longer make sense, or cohere. The audience, too, must learn what, in the world of the play, an act means.
[i] There are a couple of words in F-B’s treatise about which I have questions. As she says at the end, she wouldn't be surprised to see more useful and functional concepts emerge (290). I wonder if “prediction” is the most useful. “Routine” be more apt. It seems to me that sensory data engages a routine—a suite of acts/firings/neuro-chemical changes. Using her example, one can certainly predict the path a ball is taking and how to catch it. You may KNOW in your mind what to do, but your body doesn’t respond effectively. The routine is not perfected. It’s not a predication error, but a routine malfunction. You could, in fact, get better at catching—by training, developing the routine--which is what athletes (and actors) do. I'm not sure the brain and neurons make predictions. But they might initiate routines.
The other word I find challenging is “simulate.” That seems to imply some sort of tape running in the brain. Could it be that part of the routine is to run various routines that prepare the body to act relative to perceived phenomenon? So, the rustling in the woods may be a snake, the routine for fleeing kicks in, and the imagination sub-routine that runs goes through various actions that might more effectively prepare the body to enact the appropriate routine that results in homeostasis.
Another word is “concept.” I’m not sure how neurons contain concepts. Object retention and memory, perhaps. Doesn’t a bee instantiate, not a concept of bee, but rather, a series of firings that arrive at an organization of action-readiness? So, object – living-small-flying-yellow-stinging = impulse to withdraw?
Words like “predict” “simulate” “concept” and phrases like “your brain makes you…” seem to harken to the old homunculus notion of the brain—a little guy inside your head bossing you around. But that’s not right, is it? Likely, I'm not understanding what she means, or maybe I don't share her concept of concept!