The 2nd DeTao Talk took place on Wednesday, September 24th. Ed Hooks, the famous multi-faceted theatrical professional, actor, author and acting teacher gave a talk entitled 'We Are All Actors: an Acting Master Class for Everyone". In his speech, not only did Professor Hooks provide insight into his own profession, but he also presented acting as a way of life that, if widely acknowledged, could be beneficial to the humanity at large.
Prof. Hooks began by stressing the extraordinary nature of his lecture, as the audience was not composed of students of the acting school. His main objective was to explain how, despite different paths of education, every one of us is in fact an actor in his or her own story. In order to prove that, we must begin with the definition of acting. Acting is behaving believably in pretend circumstances for a theatrical purpose. Actors spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is exactly a believable, truthful and convincing behaviour. The final decision on whether the performance was believable is done by other humans. The question that follows is: what is special about us, humans? The answer well may be, acting.
The key to understand it is that every human is the same- every baby is born with capacity to display seven basic emotions: fear, disgust, contempt, happiness, sadness, anger and surprise, which doesn't depend on a country or culture. The emotion is in fact the automatic value response. Prof. Hooks asked the audience to imagine the inside of the baby's head. Inside the head there are 7 bookshelves of emotions. But there are no books on the shelves, as babies are yet to discover the connections between emotions and everyday situations. However, in between the bookshelves, there stands a periscope which guides. This periscope is the sense of empathy. We only empathise with emotions, which is a crucial ability to human survival. To empathise means to 'feel into'. There are also some humans who cannot empathise. For not too long have we known about mirror neurons in human brain. The distortion of these causes a child with autism to have problems with feeling empathy and recognising emotions. Sociopaths, psychopaths, serial killers are the extreme example of lack of empathy. The villain characters often present this mindset.
Prof. Hooks stated that there is something we may not know about acting: an actor does not simply hide behind the character. It is not a process of hiding, it is a process of exposing, a process of truth-telling. An actor looks at the character and tries to understand and expose his or her values, while being truthful. As stated in Hamlet, the actor should ''hold the mirror up to nature''. There is a difference between how animators apply acting and how actors act. An actor works in the present moment, which was vividly demonstrated by Prof. Hooks as he interacted with the public. The animator is more of a puppet master- he sees the character on the screen, but does not try to dress in his clothes. The acting theory is the same for actors and animators, but animators don't have to do the sensory work like touching or feeling, because they don't have deal with the present moment. On the other hand, the actor knows when the acting is good it feels like you're taking clothes off in front of the strangers. It makes you feel very vulnerable, like you were taking a risk.
However, there is one universal principle that applies both to actors and animators: all people are the same. Ultimately, there are no good people or bad people, there are just people. Prof Hooks said that if he was casted as Hitler, he would not play him curling his moustache and kicking babies down the stairs. ''Hitler did not think he was evil. He had a vision that was wrong. He did not wake up only to think how much evil he could do this day", the professor stated. Therefore, the key to understand acting is to understand that every person is a hero in his own life. Letting other people understand the character is where the art begins. Portraying Hitler or terrorists as people, with all their vices, would make it an unforgettable experience for the audience and would allow them to recognise the threats carried by similar personalities in the future. We are the same, but each one of us has an individual survival strategy depending on the values. The latter are expressed as emotions. The artist in this context becomes the leader, as he has to show the persona and open it to public interpretation.
Acting is about understanding, figuring out the values of other people. It is the ultimate survival strategy. When acting, we ask ourselves the question: how is it that this person is surviving? Indeed, when cats grow up, they practice stalking and attacking its prey. When humans grow up, we play a house or pretend to be doctors instead. We are the only animal who, in juvenile play, can pretend to be someone else. Every human child is a natural actor. We are also the story-telling animals. We have the unique possibility to learn about survival from the stories concerning other people. And acting is just story-telling. The difference is, actors are trained to do this professionally, even when they don't feel good.
Professor Hooks then went to stress the difference between theatrical reality and regular reality. The former is compressed in time and space and is defined as the action in pursuance of the objective, while overcoming the obstacle. The regular reality can also take form of theatrical reality, as many of us have probably felt. In life, we have actions and objectives all the time. There are provable objectives and objectives that cannot be proved. Everyone has objectives: it is just that we don't always think about them. ''The whole world would be better off if all people thought about what their objectives are'', Professor Hooks stated.
We can take yet another lesson from professional actors: conflict does not have to be something bad, it is just an obstacle. Think about how much time we spend chasing our own tails. In the end, there are only three types of conflict: conflict with yourself, with situation and with another person. For actors, one of these has to be present all the time. We spend a lot of time in conflict situation without paying attention to their real objectives. Being clear regarding the objectives would prevent numerous conflicts from happening. Prof. Hooks gave us an example out of his everyday life. Being married for 33 years, he also stares at the arguing young couples when he goes to the restaurant with his wife. She always wants him to stop, saying it is rude to stare. 'I stare for a living'- is Professor's Hook's response.
In conclusion, the lecture of Prof. Hooks was really enlightening thanks to its universal nature. He explained how our innate acting abilities could be used for crafting the better future. As he stated 'it is easy to say we're different, it's more difficult to understand we are the same'. If that could be achieved, people would come a step closer to living in peace together. And this is a story that could drastically improve our chances of survival.
Written by Adam Strobeyko
