Storytelling in Medicine by Colin Robertson

Author:Colin Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CRC Press

Building a character

Much of modern acting theory and practice is based on the principles of Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938), who developed a praxis (a process or practical application) of acting that revolutionised how actors tackled the creating and actualising of a character. This brought together a number of strands that equip an actor for his or her role, including voice, movement, stagecraft etc., with the overarching aim that the actors achieve dramatic realism. Stanislavski emphasised the need for the actor to draw on their wealth of experience, emotional intelligence and kinaesthetic memory to fuel and bring a character to life (Stanislavski, 1950).

More recently Lee Strasberg’s ‘method’ acting, the ‘religion’ taught in The Actors Studio – a converted church sited in the Manhattan area of New York – has gained popularity. This sees the actor researching their character extensively, striving for truth and realism sometimes to the point that they actually live the experience, ensuring an imprinted and accurate emotional memory. The apocryphal story of Dustin Hoffman subjecting himself to sleep deprivation for his character in Marathon Man is an extreme example (on hearing how he’d researched the role, his co-star, Sir Laurence Olivier, responded, ‘But why don’t you just act it, dear boy?’). It is remarkable how many clinicians’ views on analgesia, sedation and ‘minor’ procedures are dramatically changed once they have experienced the process themselves!

Stanislavski and Strasberg teach that the only way to bring truth and realism to acting is through connecting with the character; to find within oneself those elements that overlap with the character, to draw on one’s experience and to select and emphasise these traits when reproducing the role. The viewer or listener (in our case the patient or their relatives) is a lie-detector hard-wired to recognise and reject a portrayal that is not emotionally truthful.

Hamlet’s speech to the players is a wonderful summary of how to act, and was Shakespeare’s plea to his own actors delivered in code. Note that this speech is delivered in prose, not verse, to emphasise the need for abandoning any ham acting:

Hamlet Act III Scene II

Hamlet. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

First player. I warrant your honour.

Hamlet. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor.

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