The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

That’s the question provoked by Acting Emotions, a study by actor turned research scientist Dr. Elly A. Konijn. Intrigued by the twentieth century’s acting debates over emotions and “being in character,” Konijn set out to discover what professional actors actually do, and what happens to them while they do it. The existing studies showed that there was “no scientific support in the actual practice of acting for the idea that actors do identify with their characters.” The best she could find was a study that “found that method-actors, as compared to non-method-actors, had a higher degree of control over their galvanic skin reactions (sweating).” Konijn sent out a twenty-page questionnaire to professional actors in the Netherlands and the United States, asking them about the emotions of their characters, and the emotions they themselves experienced while playing them. The results “clearly show that the actors’ emotional experiences did not correspond with the portrayed character-emotions.” Actors felt real feelings, but those feelings seldom aligned with their characters’. Konijn separated her respondents further into “detachment” actors (those who technically represent their character and behavior) and “involvement” actors (actors in the Stanislavski lineage). But it turned out that even “the strongest adherents” of Method acting “do not differ from the results of the group as a whole.” Regardless of approach, there was “no correspondence between character-emotions and the ...