Imagine this situation: A friend of yours calls on your mobile, and says, “Can I meet you today evening? I really need to talk to you.” . The tone of his voice indicates, very clearly, that something is wrong. You say, “What happened?”. He responds, “I’ll tell you when I meet you in person.”. “Sure thing!” – phones cut, you finish your work early, and then head over to his house to talk.

As soon as you see him, you exclaim “What the hell? What’s wrong? You look like a mess.”. He seats you down, brings a couple of drinks, and then says, “Well, remember the project I was working on?”…”Um…hmmm”….”It’s screwed. The idea I was working with doesn’t give the best solution. I feel useless.”. For the next half an hour, he talks about how he feels inadequate, like a failure, and that he wants to quit.

After waiting for him to finish (being the good listener you are), you respond with – “Chill man! So, your idea didn’t work. Maybe you need to try different things. It’s not the end of the world. Why on earth are you getting depressed?”, and so on, and so forth. Then you talk about how you handle setbacks in your career, and tell him he should try out the same.

Feeling satisfied that you have done something good (“I finished work early, and sat with him for 3 hours”), you go home, thinking about the audition, you have the next day.

You arrive at the studio, and lo and behold, the lines you have to read are “Well, remember….remember the project I was working on?”…”Um…hmmm”….”It’s screwed…It’s gone…Over! The idea I was working with, sigh, doesn’t give the best solution. I feel useless. So bloody useless”….Ah, this shouldn’t be difficult! You know exactly how to play this; you are just going to mimic your friend.

“Well, remember the project I was working on?”…”Um…hmmm”….”It’s screwed. The idea I was working “…”STOP!…You need to say it like you are really upset. Not just upset, but depressed.”.

And you go again. The director interrupts. This happens a few more times. That’s it! “What exactly is the problem with my reading?”…”It doesn’t sound honest, as in, it appears like you are trying to mimic a depressed person; it doesn’t seem like you, or more specifically, your character is the one depressed.”.

“So what do you want me to do?”…”I want you to play it from within yourself”.

“But I can’t feel that much sadness in this situation; further I cannot play a depressed character, since I’ve never been depressed in my life….Guess what, I think I’ll skip this one. Maybe next time. Ciao!”

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The moral of the above story can be summed up in the following words, which Ratan repeats often in his classes:
“To be a good actor, you need to be a good human being. To be a good human being, means you need to be able to empathize.”

So what does it mean to empathize?

Let’s look at the definition from of the word empathy: From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

“the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this” 

In the above definition, the most important aspect, in my opinion, is the “vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another”.

As an actor, we are constantly trying to create characters, and the characters’ response to various situations. So if the situation, the response, and the words are not in congruence with each other, the audience wouldn’t believe what’s happening in the scene.

The actor, is not really in control of the situation and the words spoken, since these are defined by the script. But molding the response is in the actor’s hands, and is his responsibility.

To be able to make the response believable, the actor needs to completely immerse oneself into the characters’s being; his thoughts, words, actions, and mannerisms; that is, EMPATHIZE. (Else, it’ll seem like the actor is trying to mimic somebody else, a.k.a, acting).

So the question is, how does one do it? If somebody has achieved something with a lot of effort, or lost something valuable, how does a person, who hasn’t experienced the same events, understand the former?

Ratan breaks human emotions into primary and secondary; the secondary emotions are built up of combinations of the primary emotions. All human beings, in general, experience all of these emotions to various degrees. If one understands this, one realizes that it’s simple (not necessarily easy) to empathize with another person or a character.

Let’s go back to previous example about depression. Depression is a prolonged state of extreme sadness (I’m speaking in terms of emotions, not in terms of medicinal science). And on average, every person has experienced, even if it is for a brief moment, a state of extreme sadness.

Now to play the role of a depressed person, an actor needs to begin with re-living this state of extreme sadness, while simulatenously observing his whole being. Only this will make him understand what it feels to be real, and consequently be able to reproduce that realism on stage.

It might seem that this applies only to the so-called “negative” emotions, like sadness and anger. So let’s consider the case of playing a happy character. Say, to project happiness with utmost realism on stage, you need to think of the time you spent on something/somebody which/whom you ultimately lost, in a rather painful fashion. Is opening this door easy? Not for me.

It seems like a straightforward theory, and it probably is, but it’s the implementation of it, which is a fundamental difference between brilliant acting, and good acting; because it involves going back to one’s experiences to feel a certain emotion, even if it’s the most painful one of your life. That would mean “opening doors and windows” (Ratan’s words) which you have absolutely shut. This is not the complete picture, since many of us are used to reminiscing about our past, over and over again, in the private spaces of our minds. But as an actor, we need to do this in front of audience. In Ratan’s words – “Being real, means exposing our emotions completely to an audience (stranger), and being totally vulnerable.”.

The previous week has been largely about this – channelizing our demons to create realism on stage. Or rather, we took the first steps in this direction. We relived/re-experienced stories from our past by narrating them to our fellow students, and I think it took a lot of guts to do so. I salute some of my classmates for having the courage to share some very painful stories from their lives.

But it didn’t result in us wallowing in our emotions; Ratan also taught us tricks to switch in and out of emotional states, which is absolutely necessary to preserve one’s sanity while acting. Brilliant actors have failed to do this, which has ultimately led to abject misery in their lives.

One of the biggest mistakes to avoid in this process, is “analyzing” the experience. I mention this, because I now realize that I did the same in my previous advanced workshop. I was trying to be too methodical, and in the bargain, lost out on actually creating enough realism in my acting. I now think (though I have to try it out while rehearsing), analysis comes much later; after an actor has conquered the art of being real in a scene.

ps:  I had been thinking about 3 different stories to tell in the class; and as I was re-collecting them, I realized the impact they have had on my personality, which I was unaware of. As Ratan says – “Acting is therapeutic, and this has been shown via psychological research.”. Is it any surprise that some of us fondly call him “Baba”? 

Thank You Ratan “Baba”!