The Actor's Imagination

Imagination: 

“The act or power of forming a mental picture of something not present and especially of something one has not known or experienced.” (Merriam-Webster)

“The ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.” (Oxford)

A writer’s blank page. A painter's blank canvas. The need that sparked the creation of the first stone tool. This is where imagination begins. The human imagination has given us everything. From those first stone tools to the iPhone; from the first rhythm beat out on a hollow log to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, we progress only as far as our imaginations will allow. 

Art is especially indebted to the human imagination. Film and theater couldn’t exist without it. A writer creates a story. A producer or director has a vision for bringing it to life. Sets and costumes are built. Lighting designers or cinematographers are enlisted. Sound and music are recorded. Actors are cast…That's a lot of imagination at work. But if everything is written, built, sewn, blocked and lit, what exactly is the lowly actor’s imagination contributing? 

People who consume media without any particular thought to how it’s created may think that actors simply show up and say the lines in a way that sounds convincing and make facial expressions that approximate what the characters should be feeling. Anyone with any training or real exposure to acting likely knows this isn’t true, but still may not be fully aware what it is the actor contributes to the overall production, creatively. If our job is to play in a world already built by everyone else, what can we bring?  

The actor brings so much. Every aspect of the actor’s craft is dependent on imagination. Despite the work done by other artists and craftspeople, the characters are still only words on the page. Actors need to learn who these people are. We need to breathe life into the lifeless words. We have to invest in emotional realities that do not yet exist. And that is a huge responsibility. In order to do so, we utilize certain tools:

• “Given Circumstances” - the facts pulled from the script. 

• “What If” (or “Magic If”) questions - What if it were me? What if I were…

• “Personalizations” or “Substitutions” - Finding your own way into what’s at stake for the character

• All of the sights, sounds, smells and tactile experiences in the world of the play and how characters are affected by them.

• A character’s personal history or extended biography. 

These tools and others help us to bring a character to full, truthful life. They save us from mimicry and allow us to have genuine, impulsive experiences with each other in performance. Imagination makes us “believe,” and that is everything.   

Stella

There are several exercises actors use to hone their imaginations. Stella Adler had a number of really great exercises, like the Emperor's Robe or Lemon Tree exercises. She may have asked you to describe a lemon tree in detail. Whether or not you’d ever seen an actual lemon tree is beside the point. You can visualize your own version, no matter how accurate it is, and describe that tree. 

Uta Hagen, Sandy Meisner, Viola Spolin, Strasberg, Grotowski - they all had exercises designed to  strengthen students' imaginations. Still today, sense memory exercises, word-based exercises, improv games and visualizations - these are some of the practices we employ to strengthen those muscles. 

Occasionally, I'll have a student tell me they're not sure they have an imagination. A few say they have never imagined anything ever. When I hear that, I have only three things to offer:

1. I think it’s nearly impossible to have no imagination. An underdeveloped imagination? Sure. A life where you’ve never been given permission to imagine freely? Absolutely. But with vanishingly rare exceptions, being human means having an inner life of some kind, and therefore an imagination. 

2. Why are you in an acting class? What drew you here if not that you can see yourself doing something off the well-worn path? If you truly cannot imagine, how did you even get here? And, now that you are here, what do you expect will be asked of you in this training that won't call on that particular facility? 

3. You can work on it. Using the tools above, you can train your imagination, much like you can train yourself to play piano or to run a marathon. Practice (and, I suppose, a good coach) can help you build up to it. 

I like to start with a series of exercises designed to slow down thinking and reinforce breathing and relaxation. Letting the mind wander in a fully relaxed body and allowing yourself to sit back and watch the mind's movie run? Invaluable. But like any meditative process, it takes a while to fully let go. It takes consistent practice.

Beyond that, start a journal and write about something you do every day, or some interesting thing you learned or saw happen on the subway.  Listen to music, preferably music without words, to get lost in the fully abstract experience. Read. Reading anything at all is good, especially these days, but in this case I mean novels; specifically, good narrative fiction. There are over 100 years of Nobel prize winners to explore. We have endless Pulitzer or Booker prize winners to pick from. Some of my favorite authors are Salman Rushdie, Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin. Good writers help you to see and feel a story. They lead you to empathy, which uses imagination as its fuel.

Find a picture or painting and make up a narrative about what’s going on in the image. How did events lead to that moment? If that’s too much, start with trying to visualize what it is you plan to have for dinner later tonight. See yourself preparing it. Picture your future journey to work or school or wherever it is you plan to be tomorrow. What can you see? Go for an actual walk alone, without earbuds in. Leave your phone behind, if you can. Observe the world. Stop to closely examine something in all its detail - a flower, a feature in a tree or something odd on the sidewalk. 

If you already consider yourself a deeply imaginative person, these exercises are a great way to stay stretched out and reinforce your skills. If you are not sure about your abilities to imagine, begin to explore some of these ideas. Start slow. Then, maybe come into an acting class for more. Challenge yourself to see how much you can grow. You'll be a better artist for it.