“BODY LANGUAGE”
Recently, I was watching a documentary entitled “Secrets of Body Language” on The History channel, and the point was made that only 7 percent of what we humans communicate to one another is via words. Fully 93 percent is via body language, non-verbal signals, eye-blinks, status transactions (Read “Impro” by Keith Johnstone) and such. This reinforces the essential lesson that “Acting has almost nothing to do with words.”
New actors often think that an ability to memorize lines is essential to being a good actor. Actually, it is not a good idea to memorize lines by rote, even if you can. If you can figure out what your character wants in a scene, then you will see that only those words written in the script will do. In other words, what you do is go from intention to intention rather than from line to line. True, television shows put a high premium on a fast-study, one-take kind of actor, but you don’t want to learn acting in the first place that way. Words are the caboose of a scene, not the locomotive.
This is also the reason why relaxation is so important on stage. If you are tense, you body will not move well, and you will block your emotions. Your gestures will appear studied and purposeful when, in fact, we rarely focus directly on gestures in real life. As I have said in previous craft notes, I do not personally include a lot of relaxation exercises in my acting workshops because I have discovered that, if an actor is confident, then relaxation will follow. On the other hand, I can put a self-doubting actor through relaxation exercises until she is as limp as a dishrag, and the moment she starts acting, the tension will return.