Designed Sponteneity

Designed Spontaneity, its a concept in acting. In practice its elusive, but it is the best way to categorize or describe the quality that the best actors have present in their work at their best times, and something we could/should all strive for. It means exactly as it sounds, that the impulses and activities of the actor (as character) on stage are literally arising and happening impulsively, spontaneously, but have in fact been set up in advance to occur in a very specific and particular way.

It sounds not doable. The actor has prepared and rehearsed and anticipates behaving a certain way as the character. How can the impulses, the driving force of this behavior, be literal and real and happening at the very moment, especially when everything is contrived and made up anyway, i.e., its not real, its a play, fake conditions, pretend? Doesn't an actor go through the motions and in effect show or just demonstrate the behavior of the character? Most actors do just that yes. The good at their best don't - they have the spontaneity to their work, and that sets them apart.

So how is it possible? Actors work on stage with multiple awareness. There is the part of the actor which functions telling them they are J. Smith and they are acting in such and such a play, and it is 8:30 at night and they are on stage and when they get home later they have to do their laundry. In other words, the everyday mind, everyday awareness. This type of awareness is never lost. When this mind/awareness looks at the scenery on stage, it never, ever believes or acts like the painted backdrop is real trees or real forest. It knows good and well and forever that it is merely a painted backdrop on the stage. Then there is the part of the actor which functions as the actors craft, this is the mind/awareness which provides a set of instructions - those instructions are intended for next part of the actor, that which is the mind/body instrument - that part of the actor actually doing the acting, or the living within the circumstances of the play. This part too has its own unique sense and awareness. It is on that level of awareness and sensation that the impulses are happening for real, literally, in the moment, providing the spontaneity. This level functions and responds as if that painted scenery really is trees and forest. The design aspect to the spontaneity is coming from the actors craft awareness. That mind/awareness looks at the painted scenery and works to turn it from paint and fabric to the as if it were real trees and forest.

Very tricky to describe this fact of multiple awareness for the actor but that is essentially how it works, or should work. When the mind/body awareness that is the actual acting instrument is responding fully to each instruction given it by the actors craft awareness, and only to those instructions, i.e. not to one given from the daily mind/awareness, then it can begin to come to life so to speak, generating for itself those literal impulses which in turn make the behavior of the actor truly spontaneous. Designed spontaneity we say.

Many actors have mastered those first two types of mind/body awareness - the daily mind and the actors craft - but they have not fully investigated or practiced their working relationship with that third one, the actors instrument, except on a kind of elementary level. They just sort of let it happen. Or they force feed it. That means usually that they have not recognized, or do not recognize when the instrument mind/awareness is able and creative on its own - when it has been sufficiently warmed up and propelled strongly enough by the others to do its own thing. They have not learned to trust it, to let go, to allow it to function, on its own.

Heady explanation, yes. The point is the multiple awarenesses and the fact that one of these can function in the moment with real impulses and activity while following a course set out for it.