Body Language for Actors

They say that actions speak louder than words and we’re putting that to the test this week as we explore the topic of non-verbals, commonly known as body language.

Understanding and mastering body language can really help an actor deliver a performance that is rooted in truth and that resonates deeply with the audience. But how do we do unlock the silent power of body language to effectively convey what’s going on inside the character and take our acting to the next level?


Book a Live Intro Seminar for the SPOA:
https://spiritualpsychologyofacting.com/courses/online-intro-seminar/

Support us on Patreon:
www.patreon.com/TheSpiritualPsychologyofActingPodcast

If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can do so by emailing podcast@spiritualpsychologyofacting.com

If you have any feedback, thoughts, topics you think we should cover in future episodes or questions about the Spiritual Psychology of Acting…whatever it is, we’d love to hear from you.

Follow us:

Instagram: 

SPOA - https://www.instagram.com/spiritual_psychology_of_acting/

John Osborne Hughes - https://www.instagram.com/john.o.hughes1/

Jordan Turk – https://www.instagram.com/jordan.turk/

Twitter:

SPOA - https://twitter.com/spiritualacting

John Osborne Hughes - https://twitter.com/JOsborneHughes

Jordan Turk - https://twitter.com/jordantheturk

Facebook: 

SPOA - https://www.facebook.com/SpiritualPsychologyOfActing

 

An Awakened State production.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

One of the reasons why I encourage actors to meditate is to daily find that stillness because when you connect with stillness, you connect with the depth of your own being. And it's that that gives the actor sort of gravitas and presence.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hello and welcome back to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting podcast. They say that actions speak louder than words, and we're putting that to the test this week as we explore the topic of non-verbals, commonly known as body language. Understanding and mastering body language can really help an actor deliver a performance that is rooted in truth and that resonates deeply with the audience. But how do we unlock the silent power of body language to effectively convey what's going on inside the character and take our acting to the next level? There's one way to find out. Let's jump into it. So today we're discussing body language for the actor and whether or not that is important for the actor to learn about. I think, spoiler alert, I think it very much is. He's famous for the phrase, one cannot not communicate, which is kind of the tenet of research into non-verbal body language. That idea that we're always communicating something. But he realized that process between human and computers also happens in life and that on one level we're transmitting content, which is the words that we say, and on the second level we're suggesting how the receiver should process that content. And that is through non-verbals, body language, gesture, facial expression, etc. And then the American acting coach Robert Cohen wrote a book called Acting Power, and in that he talks about these two guys, and he called this thing relationship communication or relecom for short, which is like this continuous feedback loop, very much like computer systems do, which for humans it's whenever they're in contact with another human being, this relecom, relationship communication is happening all the time. And so, you know, that very much that same principle of we're we're never not communicating something. And then that led me into this quite uh sobering statistic that um apparently when we're communicating with another person, 55% of what we convey comes from body language, 38% comes from the tone of voice we use, and then just 7% from the actual words that we say. I mean, a crazy stat, really, that the actual words that we say, the content, it makes up only 7% of what we're conveying to that person. And this is happening on a subconscious level, everyone does this. For me, that made me think of you know, what do what do most actors do when they get a script? It's they they find their character. How many lines do I have? They boil down the character to the words they say, but that's really only 7% of the job, according to the statistic. And it's why I think when when when family and friends come see you perform, they say, How do you remember all those lines? It is well-meaning and it's meant to be a compliment, but it can't help but frustrate an actor, I think, because it's almost saying that's their only job is saying words, remembering words. Lines never, yeah. Exactly. Um, but that is only 7% of the job. So, right straight off the bat, we we see how important body language is, it's conveying over half of the message that we're transmitting to people.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

Right. But the body language in life happens naturally. You know, this is this is a uh a subject close to my heart, you know, as a training actors and and interest in in acting. Yeah. And I, you know, I've got a number of body language books that I've looked at over the years. It's very, it's very interesting, you know, that uh if somebody scratches their nose, they might be lying. That, you know, you get those kind of things, um which are very basic, really, and can be deceiving because someone might just have a cold or they might, you know, they might there might be something behind it. Um, but in acting, there's the content, the inner content that you're creating, and that's the character's thoughts. And then there's the manifestation of those thoughts. And really, you know, in life, we have our thoughts, and as you're saying, that you know, what was the sentence? You you're always saying something, or it's impossible not to say.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

One cannot not communicate, or kind of more commonly, that we're always in a state where we're transmitting information of some sort.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Right. So the information and whether we want to or not, the information is transmitting itself, it's manifesting itself through the body. And of course, the voice is a part of the body.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:09

Is that is that manifestation? So, what I've in in actual the practical approach in acting is that if you get the actors, you know, as a director, your main job, first of all, is to help the actors to get into character, to understand, you know, what are the thoughts behind these lines? Why are we saying these lines? What's the, you know, what are all the affinities that have led to this? What's happened? Where is all this coming from? What's the psychology uh that's behind it? And then if the actors are free, and I I personally put a lot of emphasis in the early part of the training, where I encourage the actors to find their own natural sound, their own natural posture, and their own natural walk. And by that I mean natural meaning without um the acquired tensions uh which have come through psychologically um through uh mimicking others, uh through you know, certain purposes that we have, is that what happens if we drop all of those kind of inner tensions and just let the body return to its sort of natural tensions? Uh and that and when the body has just sort of natural tensions, then the whole physiology is more expedient. You know, you're not compressing the chest if you're standing up straight, so you can breathe better, the blood can flow better through the body if you found a sort of a natural posture, and then translating that into a natural walk, and of course, finding your natural sound. But then you bring in the character's thinking and allow the character's thinking to, as it were, dance itself through you in the same way as a dancer listens to music, and then the music is physically expressed through the dance movements. Yeah, uh, in acting, the the music is the character's thoughts and the rhythm of the scene, and the actors really, through the non-verbal communication and through what we you know, what we're calling body language, express the character's thinking through that, providing you know that the character isn't trying to cover something up, they're covering up what's going on, but you still have to create the inner content. Um and if the actor is free, what I find is when the actors are confident and free and they you know they know how to get into the character and they know how to let go and let it happen and take the brakes off, much of what we call in acting, we call it modeling. That's the kind of final design of the character, modeling not as in you know, strutting up and down a catwalk, but modeling like out of clay, shaping. So actually shaping the performance, um, the movement on stage, how that where the characters move, you know, go over there, pour yourself a drink, if you could turn on that line. Um, when you say that, maybe just play with your hair, uh, you know, you you might give give the actors those kind of things, but only if they haven't come up with it themselves. And by getting the actors into character and getting them to actually, you know, have the character state of mind through the process we use the what we call the EPOA system, the event purpose, objective action, and then programming it and how to get it. Once you've got the character's thinking, then it's allowing it to manifest itself. And first of all, you have to learn to just be free and just allow it to. There's an there's a natural measure to this. You can you can get an actor who is inhibited and unable to let the character's thoughts manifest through the the body and the voice. There's something holding back, yeah. Or you can get the other way, you know, that's holding back, or you get the other way where the actor is showing, is adding something extra, uh, where they're thinking about their movements and how they look. And they're really in what we call passive imagination. They're they're thinking about uh how they look, which of course the character might be in passive imagination. That's that's uh totally acceptable, but the actor shouldn't be um in passive imagination thinking the move. So you've got on one extreme actors that are unable to be free enough to you know dance the character's thoughts, as it were. And then on the other hand, you you've got actors that are pushing the result, yeah, and they're showing something that isn't there.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

It's almost like as well, it's like the the showing aspect is almost keeping the audience at arm's length, isn't it? Saying, look how good an actor I am. I'm not actually this person, I'm pretending and I'm I'm not doing a good job. You're keeping the audience at bay and also you're not letting them in. It's kind of it's it's it's a twofold.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Well, you're also in a way, you're condescending to them because you're saying that you know, can you see now what the character's thinking? Can you see now what I'm doing? As if they're stupid is is that if you think it, the audience will get it. Yeah, because behind all the physical actions are the the thoughts and thoughts are matter, right? So the self is consciousness, it's or you could call it spirit, but thoughts like the body are matter, they're subtle matter, they're very fine matter, but they are matter. So thoughts are things, and all things, including thoughts, have what I call a resonant vibration. Uh Stanislavski talked about this as he talked about as tempo rhythm.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Um, but I think that's slightly because uh because you can think that a thought has a you know a rhythm that you could perhaps clap or you could it's something like that, but it's it's more subtle than that, it has a vibration. For example, you know when sometimes someone's lying to you, the thought vibrations, in other words, the pictures that they're seeing internally, and the words they're using and what they're telling you don't match. Yeah, and there's a discrepancy between the pictures that you're receiving through the resonant vibration, yeah. And it's rather I might may have used this analogy before, but it's it's rather like we all have a a sort of teddy tubby television aerial coming out of our crown chakra, and uh this is picking up a lot of information. Uh it's not just picking up the the movements and the micro movements, etc., and and the micro expressions, but it's also picking up the thought vibrations that are behind it.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

And if you can read that, if you and really the the skill of doing this is you know, you've got to get the tarnish off of the uh aerial, you know, ignorance, as it were, forms a kind of corrosion over the aerial, and so we're not picking up the signals properly. We become a bit dull, you know, to what to what's going on, but awareness and uh finding out, and of course, meditation, as it were, remove the corrosion from the aerial and keep it sort of shiny and bright, and it's very fine and it picks up the messages that are going on behind. So you you you kind of know what people are thinking because it's in the thought vibration. It first manifestation, of course, is in the eyes. You know, the eyes don't lie. The eye you can see it's all in the eyes, and it's so tiny what the thoughts are doing to the eyes. Yeah, you know, it's glazing them, it's brightening them, it's uh putting you can see confusion in the eyes, you can see doubt, you can see when there's covering up, you can, you know, uh you can see whether the the action is an inwardly directed action or an outwardly directed action. Uh, even if the person is by all accounts perfectly still because of these subtle thought vibrations that are behind it. Now, if the actor doesn't have the character's thinking, then obviously there are no thought vibrations that the audience are picking up on, and the audience gets bored because now the actor's just saying words and moving around the stage, thinking about uh what he or she looks like.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

It's so boring.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, either that or it's it's it's either that it's the wrong, you know, they've got the wrong thinking and they're they're kind of transmitting the wrong signals. I I find that if you're watching, you can be watching something and just it's just not grabbing your attention because you don't really know what's going on with the characters and you feel like it's on this very surface level. If you're watching something like Succession or Breaking Bad, it's like, oh, you can just relax because every little tick, every little kind of nuance, every little inflection, it's all it all means something. It's all saying something about that character, saying something about the situation they're in. It's almost like you can just like you can watch and not have to try and decipher what the actor is trying to do. That's I think that's when you're when you're watching something, you can just go, ah, I can relax.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

That's it. It just it just happens. And and it, you know, that's why the acting itself feels effortless on behalf of the actor, they're not really doing anything, they've just created the character's line of objects of attention.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Rather like, you know, I teach actors that you know it's like layers of a cake. You have at the very sort of bottom layer that there's all the time is the character's mind triad, the self-image, super image, and the germ. It just sits there as a constant impression. And then above that, the next layer would be the EPOAs, and that's this the character's specific state of mind in each episode of the play. And an episode is a manageable chunk of the play. It's a sort of, you know, it's a rehearsable sort of chunk of the play where each character has one of these EPOAs. And then above that, the sort of top line are what I call the score of the part. And these are the moment-for-moment thoughts that you design in rehearsal. You know, when the character says that to you, you have this thought about it, and then when you're saying this, you're having this thought, and you're designing the thoughts rather like um setting up a line of dominoes, you know, in domino toppling. You set up all the different dominoes, you're choosing what the dominoes are going to be, and then you flick the first one, and then that activates the next one. That acts that's the kind of inner score of the part are the choices you've made about what you're thinking moment for moment. And then the physical movements is the last stage. The last stage then is modeling it and making sure that everything can be seen and nothing is shown. Yeah, that's the principle. Everything must be seen, but nothing can be should be shown to the audience because it just immediately looks phony. You know, the audience aren't stupid. They know the difference between authentic acting where they're actually, you know, they don't know what's happening to them, but they're getting the resonant vibration of the character's thoughts because they're reflecting in the actor's eyes and in, you know, in all the microexpressions in the actor's face. And the difference between that and phony acting when the actor's just showing, because they're not getting these vibrations as they're watching. And these vibrations they come on the stage, you feel it. You know, this is why why theatre is so visceral when the actors are actually in character and actually got the thinking, but it transmits itself through the screen, and of course, you know, it transmits itself through the radio, yeah, through the sounds.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

So that's what's important. Uh, you know, with all our talk of body language, is that really we we don't want to be leaving too much to the the, you know, now scratch your nose, now um put one foot over there.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

And if you could just for the sake of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

It's such a great picture that the setting up of the dominoes and then just flicking the first one. It's such a great image because it's like you're doing all the work, and then at the very last stage is kind of letting all that go. You can very simply just effortlessly one little push, and it's all all of it's there. The work is kind of supporting you as an actor. Yeah, and I love that that phrase about listening in character. It suggests this kind of you are just in it. It's it's not like a kind of a meta thing where you're having to kind of struggle or or or or force it. It's this kind of beautiful play, I guess, that you've you've got this character that you you've created, and you can just live in it. You don't have to show, you don't have to struggle with it. It's just it's pure play.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yeah, the actor, the the character, we perceive the world through our psychology.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

So there are filters, you know. We see, you know, because of cognitive dissonance, you know, we we see what we wish to see, we hear what we want to hear. We'd see a very different world. If we look out the window and you watch the world go by with a purpose, I want to find out, and then you switch the purpose to I want to be superior, and you watch people walking down the street, what you'll see is very different.

unknown 19:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Do you see what I mean? And these purposes uh and causal thoughts and actions, they serve as kind of filters. You know, they filter out what you know, we hear what we want to hear, we see what we want to see. And that's listening in character is listening, is having programmed the character's purpose and self-image and their thinking, and then being in that thinking and then interpreting what the other character is doing through that. But that'll only happen if you've programmed the purpose, if you've got it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah, well, that's the thing, isn't it? Because, like, like you're saying with the tempo rhythm, like tempo is you're picking up on or you notice someone's mood, whereas the rhythm is that manifestation of that mood. But I do love that slight difference of calling it a resonant vibration because it again it it suggests this thing that's constantly occurring. We're always picking up on little subtle cues. Like, if I'm making dinner and my wife comes in from work, I know within a second or two what kind of day she's had. Just coming in, and it's it's the body language, it's it's it's everything you're just picking up on on the tiny little inflections, like you see, the eyes, it it's every little thing you're you and you're getting the pictures of her day, like it's that you're kind of seeing everything that she's seen by the sound of her putting the key in the door and walking into the hall and putting her bag down.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Yeah, you can when you know someone really well, you can feel the vibration of everything that's behind it. Yeah, and that's where the that's what the acting is, it's creating the thoughts and creating those vibrations and then allowing them in a measured way to manifest themselves through the body. So the point is then that if you create the character's thinking and you've got the thoughts, therefore the vibrations of those thoughts will naturally be there, and you have a free body and voice and mind, obviously, you know, the tensions that are in the body are manifestations of tensions in the mind. By tensions in the mind, I mean, you know, purposes meeting obstacles in our psychology create tensions. Physical tensions in the body. So if you've created the character's thinking and you're free, much of the movement, the expressions, the gestures, and especially the bits you can't control, the uh sort of uh micro communications, the micro emotions, etc., will just occur naturally. And that's a lot of the trick. I I I encourage my actors when we get onto this in in class, is I give them a homework, and the homework is to go home and on a day where there's no one around, um, close the curtains, or you know, and put on a piece of music that they like, or it can be any any piece of music, and just listen to the music and then dance to the music and allow the body to express whatever the music's doing. It doesn't matter whether you judge yourself to be a good dancer or a bad dancer, that's not the point. It's just for you as an actor to understand the relationship between a thought and allowing it to manifest.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah. I think that's a that's a great point because I think for for some actors, you know, they live their life habitually in quite a submissive place. And so, like, if they're trying to play a confident character, the very actions that will make them look confident, they feel like they're being aggressive or they feel like they're being completely over the top. It's just something they're not used to, right? I think for actors, we do need to get used to being able to play any character and what it's like to feel confident, what it's like to feel submissive, what it's like to feel dominant and threatening. And I think, especially if that's not our habitual mode of being in life. It's like it's developing a dictionary almost, isn't it, of behaviors?

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Yeah, but but it's finally learning how to get us, get our individual, you know, who that we think we are, the actor themselves, out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

And let the character's mind that we've created in the rehearsal through the choices we've made and the questions we've made and the imaginate, the use of the imagination, it's all there. You know, it all sits there as a complex in the same way as you know, the whole life of Jordan is sitting there now as a complex.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Do you see what I mean? It just sits there, the whole, the whole lot. You don't see all the vet all the experiences and pictures that that's made of, but it just sits there.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Uh, and the same as if you do all the work on the character during the rehearsal, though that complex will just be there, but then the skill is allowing it to manifest.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:37

I get actors just first of all walking around the room a lot. You know, in my live workshops, there's a lot of walking around the room, finding your own natural walk. And then I'll go, okay, now you're in a um, you're getting ready to go to a nightclub, right? You're standing in front of a mirror, and uh your purpose is that you want to be desired. So imagine the eyes looking at you when you're walking through the club and that you want people to look you up and down and want you, and you want to be seen to be sexy. And I'll say, right now you're walking through the nightclub and you're looking at people at the bar, and they'll notice how their walk just naturally changes. You know, if they're relaxed, I mean, some will start playing, you know. I tell them to avoid the in the manner of the word. It's an old sort of parlor game that the Victorians used to play, you know, like close the curtains in the manner of the word briskly. And so it'd be a very showy thing that they would do. I don't mean that avoid playing in the manner of the word and just see what happens if you get the character's thoughts and you relax and let the thoughts just manifest. It's neither forcing nor holding back. It's just it's the simplest thing of all, it's just being free and let and letting it happen without judging or criticizing it. That's when you get the best acting.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

And I think a lot of actors can be quite lazy in that regard as well, that a lot of the work is in creating these complexes and affinities. Once you do that, like you say, you can just get yourself out of the way and have fun with it. I I had this recently actually with an edition that I did, a self-tape, and it was like a five-minute long scene, and they needed it for like the next day. And so they said, you can have the script in your hand, it's fine. And so there was no pressure of learning the text, there's no pressure of working it out, you know, beat by beat. I just had to go and do it. And I ended up sending the very first take, this five-minute-long scene, because when I looked back at the first take, there was a freedom there, and there was a character there, and there was all the expression, the gestures, everything was coming out naturally. There was no time to worry about how I was going to look, how I was going to sound, how I was going to come across, am I getting across all this to the casting director? That freedom almost gave me permission. That lack of self-consciousness, it was a vibrant character, even though there was, you know, no time to create that character. You know, I've I've had this before, you know, work in class with you as well, that when when we do this work, when we create these affinities and complexes, it is amazing how deep the character feels. Like that you feel that you've got the character in you. It's it's where you want to be as an actor, isn't it? Where you're not trying, you're not working hard. It's kind of flowing out of you effortlessly.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Yeah, it happens organically. Um, it's a bit like I I always think of when you make a snowball, you know, that's like making the core of the character, you know, getting the the mind triad really clear, selecting the right snow, as it were, and then compressing it and taking care and making it really nice and round. In other words, taking care and taking the time to identify and program the mind triad. And then once you've got something really solid, you just begin to roll it, and it starts to pick up more affinities. Once you've got that core, those you've made those core decisions about who this character is, then it starts collecting other affinities. Just add imagination and ask yourself questions about the character, and more and more thoughts will grow just organically, you know, as the character develops. And the more characters' thoughts you have, like the surface of a snowball, the more characters' thoughts you attract. You know, and if you can get a role with uh on a roll with it, you're just organically living the life of the character, and that's what every actor wants, yeah, is to be in that state. It's what's Stanislavsky called on the threshold of the subconscious, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Where you're just organically thinking the character's thoughts. But of course, that only comes from having the conscious technique of knowing how to create those thoughts, choose them wisely, appropriately for the scene, and then how to program and embody them. You know, and that's what the spiritual psychology of acting is. It's it's how do you do that? It's you know what one of the skills and techniques to develop to be able to do that. So you never get nerves when it's uh a self-tape, you know, because you're confident you've you know how to act, you know what questions to ask yourself, you know the 10 steps to creating a character, and you know every time that if you follow it, a character will come out of the end. However, we've said how you know that the best acting is when you're not thinking about the body language, etc. Having said that, the final stage is, as I said, it's called the modeling the character. That's making all the choices of where you're gonna stand, where you're gonna look, what you're gonna do, the physical, the physical stuff. And this is where I find the body language stuff becomes really useful. For example, if you've got an actor, then the character's super purpose or the put the purpose in the scene is say to be respected and they're not acting it very well, right? They haven't got the thoughts, they're not getting the thoughts, or maybe it's contrary to their own, you know, they don't have the purpose to be respected very much in their own life, so those neurons don't really fire up very well. What you can do is you can say to that actor, can you just fold your arms? And then they'll fold their arms and they start to feel different, or you say, Can you just lean back and just cross your legs? Or you'll say, When he says that, can you just tense your foot at him? Or when you say that line, can you brush your hair behind your ear and reveal your wrist to him?

unknown 30:38

Right?

SPEAKER_03 30:39

It's like a flirting action. And that's the modelling, really. And then, of course, you can as a director you can give the actor this kind of modelling, but then it's up to the skill of the actor whether they can make it their own or not. You know, sometimes I'll I'll give an actor some modelling that that uh I think looks good and it is good, and then it comes to the next rehearsal and it gets to that bit, and then it looks kind of clunky. They haven't made it their own.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

And if they're unable to make it their own, I just say, let just don't worry about it, just forget about it.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

So they haven't tritified it, they don't feel there's nothing that's connected to their action, their character.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Well, they haven't got the psychological actions behind it. They they haven't got the content, the thinking behind that physical action. But often, you know, because we think that we have a mind and we have a body, but if we start as actors to start to think of them obviously as inextricably interlinked, that the body is the manifestation of the mind, uh, then we realize that if we think a thought, it naturally expresses itself through the body. And this is how evolution has designed it. You know, like you were saying, that only 7% of the communication is the actual words.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Um, that means that for us to survive, we had to be able to communicate non-verbally. You know, there are there are 43 different muscles in the face controlling all these little uh uh expressions. So it's quite a sophisticated, you know, that how it all works. So it must be very important. So for us to survive, we had to be able to naturally express our thoughts through the body. So we've got evolution on our side. That's what that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Yeah. And in a similar way, when I was looking at some forms of body language and what they mean, the covering of eyes often associated with like negative emotion, you know, or receiving bad news. But what I find was really fascinating was that also young children born blind also did this as well. So they kind of copied it from you know, seeing their parents do it. It's something that has evolutionary value, right? It goes it goes way, way back.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Yeah. So if they if they've it's not learned behavior, they can't see it. They must have been born with those uh habitual expressions. So that's why it's such a common language, you know, the the language of certain emotions in the face. Um, but as an actor, you want to go past all that.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Hi, I'm Martin Delaney, and I'm here to tell you about the upcoming seminar for the spiritual psychology of acting. I ended up studying the full course, and it really helped me to develop as an actor, and most recently to prepare for a major film role that I was involved in. Following on from the teachings and techniques of the great Stanislavski and combined with the very best in modern psychology and ancient practical wisdom, the spiritual psychology of acting will provide you with the right knowledge and a powerful toolbox or technique to help you create any character to grow as an actor and to thrive within the industry. The seminars last of two and a half hours each, it's jam-packed with useful information and will give you a firm foundation in the main principles of the art and craft of great acting. So if you love acting and if you're looking to help your game, you can sign up via the Spiritual Psychology of Acting website or click the link in the description and enjoy the many benefits the seminar will offer you. And best of all, it's completely free.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

So we've discussed how important body language is to the actor. So it'd be good then to work out the ways in which we can use body language in the rehearsal room. I think one way is through work on status. I think all status is always really important in in dramatic scenes. I mean it's important in life. I think it's always good to be aware that at any given moment we're either high status, low status, or somewhere in between. And I think some people get confused with status being about their role or social level. It's not quite that. Status is really about the way that we do things, isn't it? It is to do about body language. It's a good way of working out what the function of the character is in any given scene, I think. The lines, like we've said, are one thing. The content is one thing, but what's going on underneath the lines is is the scene, right? Is is what's actually happening.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

I think that's that's the subtext. The subtext are the psychological actions behind the the words and physical actions. Yes. So it's what the the subtext is what the character is really thinking and doing. And the text is um, you know, what's manifest, what what are they saying rather than what are they really saying? You know, the actions of what are the psychological actions of what are they really saying.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah. Because I think in life as well, that we we we rarely ever remember what people say to us. What we remember is how those words made us feel. And I think that's the important thing. It's going back again to that level of the words and content are one thing, but what's actually going on beneath those words is something else completely different.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

And that that's the art of acting, is creating what's going on behind those words, yeah, and then find a measured way of allowing them to manifest themselves. The best relationship at all being no relationship. In other words, you you're not you're not doing it, you're just letting it happen. You're not thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, I think the one one of the worst things that an actor can do is work out how they're gonna play a scene, right? I think that's that's often the death of acting. It's because in life we never know. We can never, never, ever be sure of how things are gonna go. We've always got what we want to happen. But even in I think in a relationship that's very close and you know that person intimately, you still don't know how they're gonna react necessarily to what you're gonna say or what you're gonna do. And I think deciding how you're gonna play a scene is the death of any kind of life in that scene, isn't it? Because it's just it's just not how it happens in life at all.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

No, that's it. You have your purpose, the purpose, select their actions, your your actions, and and and off you go. That's that's how it works in life. And once you've selected the purpose, the mind uh is very good at selecting the means by which you'll achieve it. In other words, the actions uh to go and achieve it. But in a scene, what I've noticed as a director is that I'm creating tension and release. So in a scene, you create tension, right? It's a bit like you know, when when an actor forgets their lines and all the tension is like sucked out of the room, and then they have to build the tension sort of back up. But you're building tension, and what is it that creates that tension is the tension between the characters' purposes. Inattention is create, you know, very often you'll see in a comedy like in John Cleese in Forty Towers, he's it got all those expressions of inattentions, and that's trying to negotiate running a hotel whilst being respected at the same time, right? So he has to be a servant of serving everybody, but he wants to be superior and respected, and that creates a lot of inner tension, which we find very funny because we we can relate to that, we know it ourselves. So that that's creating inner tension. It's between two contradictory purposes meeting, it creates tension. But what creates tension in the scene is the conflict between the character's desires. So they want different things, they see things differently, and that creates tension. And that's what creates makes it compelling is that creation of tension. And then when the purpose is fulfilled, or one of them, their their will predominates, uh, or they get their own way, and the other one has to um back off, you know, the other character has to let go of their purpose to let the other ones prevail, then there's a release. So, for example, when you if you're feeding pigeons, you've noticed you'll you'll throw down some seeds for pigeons, and pigeons have a have a very um clear hierarchy of who's the boss. Uh you could literally number them, and they could number themselves of in the pigeon community. And if one goes to take a piece of corn and another one goes to take a piece of corn at the same time, the dominant one, the one who was going to take the corn, he had the picture in his mind of getting that piece of corn in his tummy, but he can't because he doesn't have as such high status as the other one who's intercepted the piece of corn. What does he do with that tension? That's when he goes in a circle and flaps his wings to siphon off the tension. And in zoology, these are called displacement activities. And I think actors should find out something about this because there's uh and it's really a tension and then a release through a physical expression of some sort. So the character might scratch, it's a it's a relief of attention, uh, it's a displacement activity. You're creating energy, and then that energy has to go somewhere. But again, if you don't know how to program purposes and you don't have the character's purpose, all of this is irrelevant because the tension won't be created.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

Yeah, it won't be there. It's it's like you're saying that that displacement activity is like it's also, I guess, known as self-soothing as in body language for humans, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 40:43

That the actual, you know, what no, not necessarily. What a displacement activity could be going over and headbutting the wall. Right, yeah. It's releasing your tension, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. You know, I've had an actor I've worked with before that, you know, you're working with the actor, and when he made a mistake, because he so wanted to get it right, because his whole life depended on getting this this action, this particular action in this scene right. When you get it wrong, he'd go over and he'd literally headbutt the wall in frustration because of the degree of the desire to get it right.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:16

And it created inner tension. That's a displacement activity. So not all displacement activities are self-soothing.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Self-soothing, yeah. That's just one side of it. I think it's it's interesting though you're saying about displacement activities. You see it a lot in the animal kingdom. I think actors can definitely learn a lot from animals. Like you're saying, you know, actors come with their own acquired tensions. Animals don't necessarily have that because they don't have the same social skills as us. And so it's it's it's interesting to see how that plays out in the animal kingdom. Charles Darwin called it the principle of antithesis, and that's like that relationship between dominance and submission. It's like when you see it, you know, when a dog goes out and is displaying all these aggressive threat signals. The the submissive part of it is just the reverse. In a more literal context, to display a threat signal, you make yourself big, you make yourself seem taller than you are, and submissive, you make yourself seem smaller. It's that you know, it's we can learn a lot from the animal kingdom, I think, in terms of the way they do things. It's without that social aspect, which kind of makes it more dynamic for humans, but there's definitely a lot to be learned from the way that animals, like you say, have these displacement activities, have their very clear purposes and how you know whether or not they achieve those or not.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Well, the the animals, yes, the animals have threat signals and appeasement signals. And it's interesting what you were saying about status because what I was thinking, well, what is status really? Status is the right to have your will prevail, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Right, yeah, yeah. That's the bug.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Finally, that's what it really means is the the one who has the highest status, their will will prevail. What they choose will be the choice that's made. And that's people that have status, what their entitlement is is to have things the way that they want them to be. Do you see what I mean? But obviously, that in itself, that will in a scene, if you've got two characters and they both want to be the winner, they both want to be superior to each other, they create tension in each other because each other are an obstacle to their purpose to be superior. Yeah, you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. In the animal kingdom, it's worth looking at that when a superior animal gives a threat signal, you know, an alpha male gives a threat signal to one of the group of gorillas, that gorilla has a choice. They can either give an even bigger threat signal and then go, uh, who are you talking to? And they can stand up even taller and make a deeper, louder noise and bang their chest at the alpha male. Um, probably not advisable, because then the alpha male has to decide what am I going to do now? I am Going to give an even bigger threat signal.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

It escalates it, doesn't it? Yeah. Escalates the tensions.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

Exactly. Or am I going to give an appeasement signal? Because neither of them want to lose blood. Because if you get cut, you're going to get an infection. If you get in a rumble, you're going to get an infection. And you know that they don't have uh um guerrilla hospitals. Uh well, they probably do, but human beings supply them, but they don't have their own, so they're probably going to get infected and it's it's going to cause a problem. So no, neither of them want to draw blood, but they do want to sort out whose will is going to prevail. So then one will give an appeasement signal. And the appeasement signal is like you were saying, it's shrinking or being low. It's like, sorry, sorry, sorry, like that. But also, of course, what they do is they show their bottom, yeah, and they remind the alpha male of sex, and then he's placated because there's some sexual thoughts, and that numbs him from his yeah, he forgets that he was just about to attack and he feels appeased by the by the the the sexual signal, but that relates into the human world as well. Yeah, so you think I've I made the reference to you know asking an actress, you know, what when you say that line, can you just tuck your hair behind your ear to show your wrist? Now that's a a flirtation signal when you read it, you know, first of all, so it's a flirtation signal, but of course, a flirtation signal can be an appeasement signal. So you would have a lady who worked for a powerful male boss, perhaps, and then she comes into work and she flirts with the boss, but not because she really fancies him and she wants her to have an affair, but just to appease him, to keep him in a good mood. Can you see it's exactly the same as what's going on in in the sort of gorilla world, yeah, but just in a more sophisticated way?

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Well, it's interesting. I think that's the thing with human beings as well, isn't it? We we think we're very sophisticated, but really we are pretty predictable. I I I read somewhere that when we see someone for the first time, we form we rapidly form an impression of them within seconds, and it's according to their dominance, their friendliness, and their sexual attractiveness. Again, it's the going back to the animal kingdom stuff, isn't it? It's very rudimentary things, and that's kind of how our social standings operate in the human world as well.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

Yes. I mean, that's why I think we both found um Desmond Morris so fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:45

His uh uh naked ape and the human zoo. Yeah, because it's showing you all the you know these the these behaviors that exist naturally within the animal kingdom and how our behavior is just an evolved version of the same thing. Yeah, especially when you understand things like uh threat signals and appeasement signals. This is going on all the time. You think in a board meeting, you know, this is going all the time because in a board meeting you've got the people sitting around the board, and human beings are hierarchy-seeking creatures, so they're all like want to be at least the number two, if not the number one.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:20

And then that that is what creates all the all the tension and what's really going on underneath the the talk about the company's stocks and shares.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

I think that's why politics can be such a an interesting way to see how human beings try and get that level of status and kind of level of dominance up because especially with politicians, they they always want to look strong. Like they can, you know, they're giving off the impression they can lead, they're the right person for the job. And it's interesting to see when that the battles kind of commence the their the inner turmoil. I think a lot of the time you see, like in Bill Clinton, he kind of he he he sucks his lips in a little bit, and it's that kind of it's these uh I guess it's leakage, isn't it? It's the real thoughts are coming out when they're trying to show. I think Don Donald Trump does it with his handshakes, it's very weird, isn't it? Always pulls the person in to kind of get them off balance, you know, to show that I'm I'm the one in control here. Or you see it with politicians, they have that kind of that level of it's almost kind of threatening or it's dominant when they have their hands uh pushed out towards like that. Rather, it's it's it's not the attractive, kind of flirtatious kind of uh showing the palm.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

It's not the vulnerability, it's the kind of the I'm in charge, I can lead, it's all that kind of body language of of dominance and and but equally the dominance could not might be the complete opposite to that, and that comes through nurturing and caring, because it's the strong dominant one who's able to nurture and care the other ones. So they appoint themselves in a position of care because really it's a it's too it's a status thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yeah, and I think people can sometimes see through that, can't they? I think of like Desmond Tutu, he had a lot of his actions were very kind of caring and opening, weren't they? And he was able to inspire people that way. You can there's there's other ways of of uh of getting people inside rather than just just being dominant. I think you know a lot of people are kind of becoming wise to the fact that politicians are are really actors, aren't they? They're all they're uh they're trying to sell you something, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:16

Well, if you go back to the you know the the darkest politician of all, uh Adolf Hitler, um when when I was at drama school, I played the part of Arturo Ui, the irresistible wise of Arturo Ui, uh, which was a which was a fantastic experience because you got to study, because it's basically a parable to Hitler's rise to power, and so Arturo Ui, the character I was playing, was essentially Hitler. So we did a lot of study on sort of Hitler's gestures and things like that. And it turned out, and there's a scene in the play uh in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uwe where Uwe goes to see an actor, and the actor teaches him certain poses that are sort of dominance poses and you know, man of destiny kind of poses. And this is this this is real events. This really happened that Hitler went to see an actor, and there are photographs you can see uh of this where he's doing all these hand suggestion signals, and he's got his hand and his fist like this, and they're poses that are done very much in passive imagination to what effect are these poses going to have, and then you you cut from the the poses in these photographs to an actual speech, and he is exhibiting these power play poses. It is that orchestrated, it is that rehearsed.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

I mean it's the it's kind of it's the horrifying thing, I guess, isn't it, that that passive thing actually did work. It it inspired lots of people, it kind of riled them up. It certainly riled him up, didn't it? Kind of made him believe he was he was powerful and and and dominant and had and had real control.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

Yes, and because he believed it, they believed him.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah. Because he was because he was doing those physical actions, he got the pictures of dominance, and then those pictures were you know broadcast to so many people, they got the pictures and they got that sense of threat and and and aggression, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Yeah, I mean you can make the actor just feel more like the king by just getting him to sit up straight. Yeah, yeah, you see what I mean? It's you you could you can physically give the actors things to do that will help them get the psychology of the character.

SPEAKER_02 51:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:31

If the other way doesn't work, I like to work first of all from the inside out.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

And then if that, you know, the bits I haven't got, I will then uh say, like, in this moment, can you do this? In this moment you can do this. And if they're not able to make it their own, I just leave it. I just say, like, oh, don't do that then.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Yeah, yeah. It's always got to help the actor, hasn't it? It's always got to to aid them in getting there. I think that's the thing, isn't it? With the inside out, outside in, both are equally you know helpful, but it's just whether or not it gets the actor to that place where they're able to transmit the thought to the character. That's a crucial part of it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 52:11

Yeah, yeah, in a truthful way, if it's truthful. I mean, even if the character's a phony, it's the actor's sincerely playing a phony. So one really useful thing that uh I encourage actors to do, and I certainly do this myself, is that well, first of all, it's really so where do you get good at all this, uh, understanding these things, and where do you collect ideas to use for your characters? Well, obviously in life. So, you know, as I've said many times before, the duty of the actor is to observe human nature, and through that observation you get to see things, and then you might notice, oh right, so when that person said that, they uh scratched their nose. Or I noticed that when I went to say a lie, I would scratch the bridge of my nose at the point when I said, Yeah, yeah. And if someone said to me, you know, uh, what did you think of my play? And the play wasn't very good. And you obviously you don't want to say, I didn't think your play was very good when they've just come out of the play. It's the last thing you want to say to an actor when they've come off the stage. So you might say, Yeah, yeah, it's good. And you scratch your brow when you say it, and you go, Oh, that's that's useful. I can use that for a character to model a moment where I want the audience to understand that the character is lying. I can give them that visual cue. So, what I suggest is for actors is to start making a list, is to have a book and start making a list of these physical ticks and what the psychological action behind the physical action is, and start creating a kind of dictionary list of observations that you've made as an actor. Yeah. And then by just by writing them down and putting them in the book, they become available to you, and then you'll find quite organically in rehearsal at an opportune moment. Oh, yeah, here's where I could use this little scratch there, that would really help that. So make a list of physical manifestations and the psychological actions that are behind them, and they'll naturally come into play in rehearsal.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Yeah, that's the important part, isn't it? The psychological action part, because you know, the the action of looking up to the sky, you know, if an athlete has missed a great chance, uh, or if you've just heard some bad news, we often interpret that as like, oh, why me? Or are you serious? It's almost like, you know, someone up there has got it in for me. But there is a real actual physical root that is behind that. It's because when we get stressed, we have tension in our neck. And that very action of looking up to the sky or the ceiling causes the sternocleidomastoid muscles to release. And so it's like, well, we interpret it in a certain way, but that's the thing, isn't it? It's all these like, you know, people say they they they know when someone's lying because they're crossing their arms or doing all these things. Nobody can really tell when somebody's lying, it's just when somebody's feeling uncomfortable. It's like a polygraph, isn't it? A polygraph knows it knows your baseline and it knows when your heart rate goes up. And that's what sense is that you're lying about something is that something's changing your physiology because you're feeling uncomfortable. And so I always think that that's part of for an actor, isn't it? If you're feeling confident or if you're feeling uncomfortable, there's actions that can support those. If you think, oh, my character is feeling uncomfortable at this moment, you know, what actions help me get into that state? You can make a list and a dictionary of sorts, like you're saying, of of of behaviors, and hopefully that will either get you into the state or it helps you, you know, convey the state of the character is in, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:52

Yeah. The other thing I was going to mention as well, just in body language, is the feet. I've noticed the feet don't lie. Right, yeah, yeah. Uh you you've like, for example, if someone is sitting there and they don't like what you're saying, they don't agree, their foot will tense up. And the foot is actually asking you to stop.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

It's like a little bit of a yeah, it's like saying stop, but they do it with their feet. We have a lot more control over what we display in the sort of you know upper part of the body, you know, given uh given that if we want to cover up what we think, you know, because there's a contradiction between what we think and what we want other people to think we think, in order for our social acceptability or status. This this contradiction uh going on. But what I found is that the feet don't lie. If someone's interested in you, their foot will point towards you. If someone wants to get away, you'll see their feet are pointing off in another direction to get away. There's a lot in the feet. So as a director, I like looking at what are the actors' feet doing because it's it's giving the audience a lot of signals, you know, and you want all of this to just be picked up naturally. You don't want the audience to see any of this technique.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Well, I think for actors as well, isn't it? That that sense of for actors, you know, like stillness can be incredibly powerful. Like we've said, you know, even stillness can communicate strength, it can communicate a lot of things, you know. It's it's even stillness is is communicating. But often you get that with with actors, don't you? That because they're nervous, their hands are doing lots of things, they don't really know what they're doing, their body's kind of move in awkward ways because they're feeling uncomfortable. And sometimes even rooting an actor, centering them. Like it's it's not necessarily stillness that that works, it's the kind of the centeredness, isn't it? It's the it's the rootedness, feeling connected to the floor. That's the st that's what brings the stillness, right? Not not just being still. I think sometimes you can give an actor a command, and it's it's all it almost gives off the wrong impression because they've not actually understood it on a psychological level, I think.

SPEAKER_03 58:03

Well, it's that I think the important thing is that the actor has found stillness in themselves. So that's that they're they're you know do you see what I mean? So they're they're rooted in that stillness. The the character might be a blithering idiot.

unknown 58:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:19

Do you see what I mean? The character is like that, but there's there's there's a still center to the actor.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Yes, yeah, yeah. Like you say, the actor is still, they've got themselves at the way, they've got all their acquired tensions at the way, they can acquire the tensions of the character if they need if they need to.

SPEAKER_03 58:35

Yes. It's all taking place in stillness.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

Yeah, that's it, isn't it? I think acting has to come from stillness. You've got to be still so you can play any part. Anything else is interference, right? It's your own ego, it's your or your own uh tensions coming in and kind of muddying the waters, making the character unclear.

SPEAKER_03 58:55

Well, stillness is being. When you're when you become still, you become in contact with a wider sense of your own being. So this is why you know, one of the reasons why I encourage actors to meditate is to daily find that stillness, because when you connect with stillness, you connect with the depth of your own being. And it's that that gives the actor sort of gravitas and presence, is that they carry that being, no matter what the, you know, what whatever character they're playing, doesn't matter. But they've got that, they've they're rooted in being and consciousness themselves. And then when we see an actor that is rooted in being and consciousness, well, that being and consciousness that they're rooted in is our own being and consciousness. So it reminds us and roots us in being and consciousness just by observing the actor who is rooted in being and consciousness. So the message there is become rooted in being and consciousness, and the means to do that is meditation.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

Thank you for listening to the Spiritual Psychology of Acting podcast. If you'd like to help support us, head over to our Patreon page, the link of which is in the description of this episode. Just a few quid a month really helps us to keep making and growing the podcast. If you can't afford that, please subscribe, tell your friends, share the podcast, and do leave us a lovely five-star review. It all makes a big difference. That is it for now, but in the meantime, take excellent care of each other and have a brilliant week.