Acting Coaches in Los Angeles- Childhood Fears

By Kirk Baltz


True actors are not created in one day. 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 do this, actors are required to face themselves as they truly are, vulnerabilities and strengths alike, to uncover their true selves and create lifelike characters.

Every character that an actor creates is multi-dimensional as are the actors themselves. These dimensions consist of the individual or character's public persona, his or her deep-seated fears and vulnerabilities, and the tragic flaw. An acting coach can not only help an actor uncover his own dimensions but can also aid him or her in using these traits to create dimensional and relatable characters.

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.

Although the public persona is the dimension that is the most easily recognizable and obvious in a character, it is only an exterior facade and not the core of the individual. The root of a person's character is grounded in their growth and development from childhood. 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.

That which affects us in childhood remains a part of our lives until the day we die, whether we allow it to surface or not. Characters on stage or on film are no different. 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 coaches will aid their students in both uncovering and portraying the inner workings of the human condition.

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. Although many audience members may not be aware of the fact, creating multi-faceted characters is guaranteed to form a relationship between viewer and character. All great actors must learn to succeed in this form of character creation.




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