This study investigates an approach that enables actors to empathize more effectively with a character’s behavior, especially the dramatic actions that occur at the climax of the narrative. To this end, it proposes writing an autobiographical narrat...
This study investigates an approach that enables actors to empathize more effectively with a character’s behavior, especially the dramatic actions that occur at the climax of the narrative. To this end, it proposes writing an autobiographical narrative as the character as a method of actor training and examines its effectiveness through case analysis. The researcher, having experienced failures to emotionally connect with sudden behavioral shifts or intense decisions in early works, recognized the limitations of conventional cognitive analysis in understanding such actions. While conventional character analysis sufficiently addresses the overall realm of empathy toward a character, there exists another realm of empathy concerning the character’s choices in specific situations that is not easily attained. Treating this as a research concern, the researcher sought an approach combining Stella Adler’s acting theory with phenomenological writing methods.
The study proceeded in three stages: exploration of theoretical foundations, methodological research, and empirical case analysis. First, Stella Adler’s acting system was analyzed in depth as the theoretical background. In particular, the study focused on the autobiographical essays that arise during the process of embodying a role, emphasizing the “character-centered perspective” and “experiential imagination” that can enhance an actor’s empathic capacity. Second, the researcher reconstructed the autobiographical writing theory of phenomenologist Max van Manen for application in actor training. By identifying Van Manen’s four dimensions of lived description (space, body, time, relationship) and applying them to character analysis, a concrete writing guideline called [Experiential Writing as the Character] was devised to reconstruct experiences from the character’s sensory perspective. Third, to verify the effectiveness of this method, an in-depth analysis was conducted on cases where it was applied to two newly produced original plays, 〈FBW〉 and 〈In the Belly of a Fish〉
As a result of the study, writing autobiographically as the character showed meaningful outcomes for the researcher in the following respects. First, the process of imagining and transcribing the character heightened the actor’s sense of identification with the character, helping the actor to accept the character’s specific situations and actions while overall immersion in the character was elevated. Combined with the nature of original premiere productions, this effectively supplemented information about the character that might have felt somewhat lacking from the actor’s perspective. Second, the method allowed for a more nuanced understanding of the psychological motivations behind the character’s actions, thereby contributing to broadening the range of the actor’s performance choices and increasing the actor’s confidence. When a character’s behavior was difficult to explain logically, reinterpreting it from the character’s sensory and experiential perspective made it possible to achieve a more convincing performance. Above all, by generating a backstory in which the character had exhibited similar behaviors and by concretely describing the current situation through autobiographical writing, the actor was able to actively construct the character’s trajectory.