Most of us imagine the work of an actor as a never-ending holiday: the artist takes the stage, he is in the center of attention, enjoys standing ovations and flowers. But this holiday has a downside. She remains invisible to enthusiastic fans, but represents a real danger to the mental and physical health of the actors.
The acting profession is associated with external risks – unstable employment, constant anxiety, fear of becoming unclaimed. But there are also internal problems, invisible to outsiders.
The opinion that many actors abuse alcohol and drugs is justified. However, for many years this phenomenon remained little studied and was the subject of idle gossip and hype publications in the yellow press. But statistics collected between 2018 and 2020 caught the attention of specialists. It turned out that depression in actors is diagnosed twice as often as in representatives of other professions.
Psychiatrists and psychologists in Australia and the US have identified a number of factors that can cause anxiety and stress in actors. Psychologists at the Canadian McMaster University believe that frequent depression in actors is a consequence of the fact that they experience strong deep emotions. Without them, it is impossible to get used to the role, to merge with your character.
Stephen Brown, a specialist in the Department of Psychology and Neurology at McMaster University, conducted a study on the causes of stress in theater students. He identified the main risk factors that actors are exposed to in the process of transforming into a stage character. Among them:
- inability to separate from the role, getting stuck in the psychological status of their hero;
- emotional instability as a result of the absence of this separation;
- the psychological trauma caused by the actors’ recourse to their personal stories. In order to evoke the emotions necessary for the game, the actors “pull out” their own tragic experiences from the past.
Brown explains that actors often find it difficult to shake off the emotions associated with their characters. The fictitious person, whose image the actor creates on stage, becomes his shadow. The boundary between the artist’s own “I” and the hero of a play or film is erased, and the merging of the personalities of the character and the actor no longer takes place on the stage, but in real life. This negatively affects the psyche and nervous system and, as a result, leads to various tragedies.
For most actors, the traditional way to unwind after a performance is to drink.
A 2018 study found that 40% of actors had difficulty separating themselves, their personalities, from those of their characters. Moreover, there are cases when the actor changed physically, trying on the qualities of the hero, which he deliberately imitated and cultivated to enhance the effect of his role.
As an example, the researcher cites the story of a theater school teacher. His student, shy and intelligent, turned into a cruel and rude aggressor. The changes came as he prepared for the role of a brutal killer and shocked his family and friends. This episode clearly demonstrates the effect, which in professional theatrical slang is called “leakage” and means the transfer of the personal qualities of the character to a real person – the actor.
The researcher notes that strategies to help actors step back from their roles already exist. But they are not united in the system of professional assistance, the actors simply do not know about them. As a result, the salvation of drowning people is at the mercy of themselves.
For most actors, the traditional way to relax after a performance, to take off the “frog skin” of the hero, is drinking. In this case, as a rule, the desired effect is achieved by drinking strong drinks in large doses. So the actors try to abstract from the role. However, they do not realize that it is precisely the need for separation from the character that is the main reason for cravings for alcohol.
Alcoholism becomes a tragedy for actors, their relatives, and often random people who find themselves on the path of a drunk person who has lost orientation in time and space.
The ability to part with the image is necessary to preserve the mental and physical health of the actor
In Australia, after a series of studies, for the first time in world practice, a special committee was created to coordinate the creation and activities of an organization that provides psychological assistance to theater and film workers.
For actors playing tragic roles, special techniques have been developed that allow you to “get out of character” without psychological trauma. Methods of work on psychological unloading include a variety of practices. This may be a group meeting where the actors talk about how the performance went and what they felt on stage, what emotions they are experiencing now.
Such therapy provides an opportunity to get rid of the experiences associated with the character. Psychologists working with actors use deep breathing practices, visualization, physical relaxation techniques borrowed from yoga.
Visualization, for example, includes ritual “undressing”: the actor takes off his stage costume, says goodbye to the character. The same thing is done in the dressing room – makeup is removed and a farewell scene is played out. Specialists apply different techniques in the correct sequence and thus help the actor to separate his own “I” from a fictional person. They give the actor the opportunity to leave behind the threshold of the dressing room not only the makeup and costume of the hero, but also his feelings, problems, attitude towards people.
The ability to part with the image is necessary to help the actor maintain mental and physical health. And it, in turn, allows theater and film artists to delight fans for many years, to help us understand the world and each other through brilliant images and unforgettable scenes.