Actor's Split Consciousness and Self Suppression
According to the Guardian’s Nicola Davis, a new study suggests that Method Acting involves self supression. Talented and highly skilled actors embody their roles as if their very own individuality doesn't exist.
For the new research, published in Royal Society Open Science, led by Steven Brown, they found out that during a brain scan instead of having an increase relating to pretending to be someone else, they saw activation decrease on the actor's brain, on the other hand, it lead to increased on one part of the brain the precuneus which has been linked to consciousness, this meant, actors have to split their consciousness while being the character.
As for method acting, actor's goal is to get inside the mind of the role they are playing, and the end goal is to inhabit their role's personality.
During the research, Brown said "The first thing that I noticed when I was analyzing the data is that there was definitely just a global reduction in brain activity throughout much the brain when people were in character compared to when they're answering the same types of questions as themselves.... For example, if you give people a list of adjectives and say, 'Do these adjectives apply to you?,' then this part of the brain is active when people have to reflect on their properties, their traits, in terms of the self," said Brown. "And so this was a part of the brain that we found that was reduced — deactivated we say — when people had to get into the character...." this lead him to a conclusion that acting suggest loss of self.
Brown added "Having these observations of a loss of self as seen in the fMRI studies kind of conforms with ideas about acting that there's only one you, only one vessel for your expression... So I do see acting — at least in part — as being kind of a 'zero sum game' where there's just one of you to go around. And the more you become someone else, the less there is of you."
I've mentioned this on the first part, but quite interestingly, I feel the need to expound more on it.
Another interesting shift in the brain during the study according to Brown "And so there's been discussion for more than a century that actors have kind of a split consciousness, that — when they're acting, they have to kind of divide their attention between the character and themselves."
However, Prof Philip Davis, the director of the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society at the University of Liverpool, was unimpressed by the research, saying acting is about far more than improvisation in character or “pretending” to be someone – it involves embodying the text and language.
What’s more interesting is how can one person split their consciousness to different roles (especially for actors who are playing 2, 3, 4 role at the same time) and suppress their very own individuality? The science behind it is definitely confusing, I might be wrong but it somehow implies split personalities, but having 2, or 3 or even more is kind of confusing, a lot more since Actors Play Unlimited Roles.
Lizzie Schechter, author of "Self-Consciousness and 'Split' Brains: The Minds' I", said “The impression that a split-brain subject has two minds is correct… but so is the impression that a split-brain subject is not just two human beings strapped together. They are one of us in an important, psychological sense: At the end of the day, they each think of themselves as ‘one’ of us, not two beings inhabiting the same body.”
So you see, the mind of an actor is complicated and hard to define. There are still doubts about this recent research and not all are convinced thus require further study.
