The Coach Versus the Couch: Draft of Proposal of Focused Topic

The Coach Versus the Couch: Draft of Proposal of Focused Topic

What is the relationship between “Method Acting” and living with a method? It would first be important to answer whether there is such a thing as living without a method, what ‘living with a method’ means, and whether or not an awareness of such a method is relevant to the question of its existence. “Method acting,” requires a definition of its own because, through the ages, it has developed a number of connotations so that its contemporary meaning is ambiguous.

Etymologically, ‘method’ comes from the Ancient Greek “methodos,” the pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting inquiry, system. Today it is a “way of doing things.” Every sentient human has a way of doing things so long as he does things; he has a process of completing an action that is unique to his personal individuality. The renowned psychologist, Paul Ekman, who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions, concludes: “It is a person’s appraisal of an event that triggers an emotion, not the event itself,”[i] The “appraisal” is a result of the relationship between the world and one’s inherent value system about it. If one wants to accomplish a goal, a minimal physicalization or sending one into space, his actions will be a result of the application of that value system.

Method acting is a “technique that combines work on the role, with an emphasis on researching and experiencing the character’s life, and work on the self, which stresses the actor’s personal investment and commitment to memory, experience, and worldview.”[ii] The Group Theater, the 1930s collective that produced works by many outstanding American playwrights, developed members like Stanford Meisner and Stella Adler who would become prominent figures in Method Acting to this day. Adler added that one must “define the difference between your behavior and the character’s, find all the justification of the character’s actions, and then go on from there to act from yourself, without thinking where your personal action ends and the character’s begins.”[iii] Like in subtraction, by finding the difference between one’s own value system and the projected character’s, then the result is the template of beliefs through which one can assume the reactions of the character, indeed as if he were the character.

If every action is the result of an appraisal, then every step in a goal seeking process will too be due to the specific value system that evaluates, or appraises, the new events in conscious perception.  Method Acting describes a system to Trojan horse one’s inherent value system into that of a “character’s” so that one united system results, what will stop a person who dreams of an accomplishment, a fantasy character of himself, from realizing and becoming that fantastic character by the methodological value adjustment required to similarly create one united system? Method Acting can be reexamined to be Method Living.

---

[i] Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed,  rev. ed (New York: Owl Books, 2007)

[ii] David Kraner, “I Hate Strasberg,” Method Acting Reconsidered, David Hare, ed. (St. Martin’s Press, New York, N.Y), 4.

[iii] Stella Adler, On Ibsen, Strindber, and Chekhov. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.