Acting Coach in Los Angeles- Creating Personas

June 27, 2012
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 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. The three dimensions, in particular, that compose the human person are the tragic flaw, the public persona, and our ubiquitous lifelong insecurities and difficulties. 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.

According to the works of Carl Jung, humans form their exterior or public personas as a means of exuding a feeling of strength and stability to the world so as to conceal weaknesses buried within. Expression of this persona occurs in all areas of our lives. Characters also have personas that they create to protect their true selves from the rest of the world and actors must learn to utilize their own personas to create those of their characters.

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. However, the core of a person lies in their innate strengths, fears, and issues that travel with us from childhood into adulthood. Acting coaches are trained to teach actors to come face to face with their own childhood fears and issues in order to create a truly believable character with great depth and dimension.

Our childhood challenges and situations mold us as adults and remain with us for the duration of our lifetime. The same is true of created characters. Covering up these vulnerabilities under a shield of stability is our means of appearing strong rather than helpless to others.

A great actor is one who succeeds in stripping away both the their own exterior and that of their character to reveal a deeper identity. The best coaches will aid their students in both uncovering and portraying the inner workings of the human condition.

Every member of the audience has both a public persona as well as a deeper substance that has worked to create the exterior. 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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