That Thread in Which We Ruminate on the Confluence of Actor Stance, Immersion, and "Playing as if I Was My Character"

[Aldarc]

Mind you, I think the assertion that you cannot be role playing while using dissociative/non-diagetic mechanics is like saying an actor cannot actually be feeling emotions while remembering their blocking, where the camera/audience is and adjusting to suit, or recalling their lines. I can accept that maintaining immersion in the role can be harder when your mechanics are outside the fiction, but it is not impossible. Humans aren't great at multitasking, but we can sometimes achieve it to some degree.

I often think about it like improv comedy. The improv comedian is both in-character while also thinking about how they can elicit a reaction from the audience from their in-character performance. I agree that thinking about roleplaying as strictly in-character/out-of-character tends to miss a lot of the complexities and subtleties at play here. Where I personally take issue is when pure actor stance is taken as the OneTrueWay to have GoodCorrectFun or the ideal that all roleplay should aspire to.

 

[aco175]

Do people prefer one type over the other? I tend to have varying scales of players who go back and forth. One player likes to talk in 1st person (I cast fireball) and another in 2nd (My guy casts fireball) person. There appears to be a lot of overlap and one cannot play 100% one way or the other.

I also wonder how much of this is determined by the style of the DM and what he rewards or models.

 

[Fenris-77]

1st and 2nd person are both fine ways to play. I do find that players who really target immersion as a key goal of play will normally gravitate to the 1st person. GM style helps too. For example, addressing the characters by name, rather than using the players names, is a seemingly small but actually fairly useful style item.

I don't much care for actor stance as perfect synonym for immersive play either. Partially because I don't care for stances as a useful descriptor of RPG play, or at least I don't care for the kind of discussions they tend to produce.

I also think immersion has more flavours than just the first-person all-in-character version that tends to get talked about a lot.

 

[Umbran]

Where I personally take issue is when pure actor stance is taken as the OneTrueWay to have GoodCorrectFun or the ideal that all roleplay should aspire to.

Indeed, I think the term "actor stance" was formulated neglecting what actors actually do, which is a bit of a pity.

 

[Campbell]

I think we often have an issue with conflating tools and goals. I am someone who places a very high priority on feeling like my character in the moment, but for me a lot of the tools Justin Alexander scoffed at in his initial essay actually aid that sense. We can have similar goals, but require different processes and tools to get there.

We have just started playing Infinity. I'm pretty sure a number of folks would consider Momentum to be a disassociated mechanic, but we are finding that it enables a number of situations in the fiction that are not well represented in other games. Like taking time to observe your environment often means you are better prepared for what's coming even if nothing seems amiss.

 

[Campbell]

Indeed, I think the term "actor stance" was formulated neglecting what actors actually do, which is a bit of a pity.

In my experience the notion of actor stance often associates itself with Method Acting which is actually not all that well regarded anymore. The idea that you have to suffer for your art (calling on past experiences in your own life) and never break character on set. A lot of more modern sorts of acting techniques embrace just being present, trying different things, and the ability to experience the emotion only in the moment.

The Warner-Loughlin technique is specifically a response to Method.

 

[Umbran]

In my experience the notion of actor stance often associates itself with Method Acting ...

Then it is based in a misunderstanding of method acting - which I suppose is what you get when folks who are making jargon about one thing borrow language from areas that they aren't expert on.

 

[Campbell]

Then it is based in a misunderstanding of method acting - which I suppose is what you get when folks who are making jargon about one thing borrow language from areas that they aren't expert on.

To be fair it's a misunderstanding of method that a fair number of professional actors also engage in.

 

[Umbran]

To be fair it's a misunderstanding of method that a fair number of professional actors also engage in.

Surely. It is a misunderstanding propagated in the media itself, but that doesn't make it good.

For those who do not understand what we are talking about, I give you...

Spoiler: A digression...

Method acting is often depicted as an actor being "too in character" and "never breaking character". As if when you are playing Al Capone, you keep the accent up all the time, you bring your behavior in line with Al Capone's behavior, you even think like Al Capone, even off set. The depiction is that a method actor will become Al Capone, to the point of hardly needing a script.

That's an inaccurate depiction.

Method acting is using a set of practices (the "method" in the name) to draw upon your own experiences to bring yourself into an emotional state similar to the character's. It is, in fact, specifically about bringing notions and feelings from outside the fiction into the enactment of the fiction.

The problem isn't that the actor "is Al Capone". It is that, when they have a scene where they beat someone's head in with a baseball bat, the actor gets themself into the emotional state you'd need to be in for that action. Then, the director yells, "Cut!" and... those emotions are no longer appropriate, and cannot be processed normally while walking over the the craft services table for lunch.

This can make it very difficult to deal with the actor - "Cripes, Fred, why are you made at me? I'm just a props guy!" - and moreover it is not good for the actor's psychological health. Method acting is/was associated with emotional fatigue, and sleep loss/deprivation to the point of psychological disturbance.

In the end, immersion be damned, I do not want the player of a barbarian to be as worked up as the character is.

 

[Campbell]

@Umbran

That's where the notion for suffering for craft comes in, usually with he conceit that your only other choice is being performative or hamming it up. I think that reliving past traumas is bad for both the actor and the performance. That's why I am such a fan of the Warner=Laughlin technique because it grounds the emotional center of your performance in empathy for your character. We should not have relive our personal tragedies to have grounded performances.