Acting Workshops Los Angeles- Lifelike Characters

By Kirk Baltz


When it comes to acting, great abilities cannot be formed overnight. Training with acting coaches or participation in acting classes can help actors to acquire much needed skills to aid them in improving in their craft. To reach this goal, an actor must delve into his soul and discover who he truly is as a person.

Each person and character alike is multi-faceted as opposed to being one-dimensional and static. These dimensions consist of the individual or character's public persona, his or her deep-seated fears and vulnerabilities, and the tragic flaw. Working with an acting coach has been shown to be highly effective in helping an actor to see past his own exterior and that of his character to reveal the heart of the person within and create characters that are both real and relatable.

Carl Jung espoused the belief that the human person creates a public persona as a means of protecting his true self from others and conveying an image of strength and security as a means for survival. This created persona presents itself in numerous ways throughout our lives. Similar to actual persons, characters develop public personas that must be unraveled and good acting workshops are designed to teach students how to accomplish just this.

There is no question that an individual's vulnerabilities are often buried deep beneath the surface, making the public persona seem like the dominant characteristic. However, the core of a person lies in their innate strengths, fears, and issues that travel with us from childhood into adulthood. Acting classes are designed to instruct actors in identifying these difficulties in themselves so as to form multi-dimensional characters that audiences can relate to on a personal level.

Our childhood challenges and situations mold us as adults and remain with us for the duration of our lifetime. Both actors and the characters they create form their public personas as a means of defending themselves from these insecurities. Covering up these vulnerabilities under a shield of stability is our means of appearing strong rather than helpless to others.

The mark of a great actor is his or her ability to dig past both their own and their character's public persona to the actual person within. The best coach will work with student actors in order to help them to remove the mask that they have spent a lifetime building.

All persons in the audience, like the actor and the character, have both a personal core as well as a public persona they have created to protect it. Regardless of whether or not they are aware of this fact, creating a dimensional character will never fail to hit a chord with the watcher. Being able to create characters such as these is what separates the average actor from the exceptional.




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