I keep and keep reading how some poeple thinks that Martin play himself over and over. I can only shake my head in disbelief. I can imagine that only people who never acted, never thought about acting or never read Stanislawsky could think something so far from truth.
An actor to make someone believe that how they acts is natural has to have a lot of skill, practice and talent. One of the biggest dificulty in acting is to give the impression of “reality”,of ”yeah,exactly like that i would have reacted should i have been in this situation”. Those who succeed to convey it so smoothly, that it seems efortlessly, have really big talent.
We are so very used to see in TV and films a lot of over-acting, of very simplistic and cliche acting that when someone comes and put such a normality in their acting, it might appear to the less knower as “no big deal, he play himself”.
It takes a great lot of skills to stay natural, to don’t over do it. Especilly as on a theater stage, you have to over do a little: the bigger the scene, themore you have to do it to conevy the message to the last balcony. But the camera comesto close to you,put a little bit too much, pufff! you don’t look real anymore, but a cartoon. Try to act something and film it. Do you really look natural? Seldom! Because the character you are acting, is not you, their feelings and history is not yours. You woudn’t say the same things and wound’t react each time like that (even when you see a film or a theater play and they make you believe the other way - this is the big skill of acting!). It takes time and practice and much thinking to put the mask of the character over your own, to change the way you react in the way the character would react. In the moment you beginn to look natural saying words which are not your own, in that moment when your face beginns to show the feelings of the character, not yours, in that moment you beginns to act good. And if you succeed to look so natural that someone cannot tell anymore that you are acting in that moment, well, than you are acting great! So, only those used not to watch good acting would missunderstand “natural acting” for not-acting. If you are not “seeing” the acting, you are experiencing some of the greatest acting.
Also it requires skills to still look fresh and natural at the 10th-20th takes. This is a problem also in theater, like Stanislawsky observed 100 years ago: don’t go on automatic, keep it new.
We know from a lot of other actors how much they appreciate that Martin does something different in every take. This allows him to look spontaneous and normal and not rehearsed to death. But also allows the actors with whom he acts in that scene to stay spontananeous. This is why he rise the game of every actor he acted with: they cannot fall in a repetitve game with Martin, they have to rethink and to act as everything would be new.
I used to go in theater to watch the same play over and over, to watch how the actors changed every time small bits, how the energy of the audience changed the mood and made them act diferently. I had the chance to see some of the best actors of my country with different acting skills, some possesing great voice skills, like Benedict, other imposing through their body stance. But those who impressed me the most where those who could act the most naturally and who could convey through their faces a whole deeper world tha only the words spoken. This talent in such depth as at Martin is seldom, he is really a master in improvisation and in microexpressions, a master in knowledge of humanity in its expression and ways of non-verbal communication.
I really wish that he would make some DVDs about acting, that the further generations of actors could use in their apprenticeship.
I love to watch some scenes of Martin over and over, to watch how his face changes so suble, how he can convey more feelings at the smae time, so complex, so sublte! It is a joy!
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