Chapter - 10

The Conscious, The Subconscious-And A Mental Image

There was a time when actors were taught to pose in a particular way to depict grief, arch an eyebrow to portray doubt, and shift the weight from here to there to express haughtiness. That sort of thing has no place in the technique of today's enlightened actor.

The emotional scale is not played by moving from one specific pose to another.

An actress like Judith Anderson doesn't portray grief the same way Audrey Hepburn does. Katharine Cornell—or, for that matter, any actress worthy of the name—does not delineate grief exactly the same way in two different characterizations.

Watch your family and friends. Take a look around you at a wedding, a story conference, a political meeting, an accident, a theater—anywhere you like. You'll see at once that emotion is highly personal. It is intensely individualistic in the way it shows itself.

Since different people have different ways of expressing emotion, the actor must develop understanding as well as technical tools—for flexibility and control—which will enable him to portray emotion in many molds.

The tools are the same for everyone. The end result of their use is individual.

Through training, your voice, body and mind can become so flexible and so well controlled that they will automatically obey your commands without conscious effort.

Any acting theory that cannot be proved and improved by actual use is excess baggage in the actor's tool kit. Throw it out.
Bit by bit, the science underlying the actor's art will become concrete in concept, defined in detail, and clear in purpose to you. When it does, you will be able to use the science with personal selectivity and professional judgment, as do the greatest actors of our time.

We are all creatures of the habits and characteristics which influence our personality pattern. Our own personalities are made up of habits, fears, gratifications, inhibitions, complexes, personality mannerisms and traits, etc.—most of which are subconscious.

We all know there are two parts to the mind—the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious is your voluntary mind. Your aware mind. The mind that functions when you're awake. The subconscious is your involuntary mind. It functions without your knowledge and control when you're asleep, as well as when you're awake.

You can use your conscious and subconscious mind as tools of acting to develop, heighten and enhance your own personality by making this mental image.

Picture yourself in a sailboat at night, floating on a dark, uncharted ocean. On the prow of the boat, put a searchlight.

The person in the boat is you.
The boat is your conscious mind.
The dark ocean is your subconscious mind.
The beam from the searchlight is your aware-beam.

The size of your sailboat can be compared to the size of your measurable, conscious mind—and the unmeasured ocean to your subconscious mind.

The subconscious-ocean conceals many things of which you are not aware. But they are there. Anything you can think of is there—and everything you have ever known is there.

A fraction of all this passes through your aware-beam. Beautiful fish and dangerous fish. Big habit-waves and little habit-waves. Good habit-waves and bad habit-waves. Fear and daring. Destructive floating mines and beautiful colored-glass fishing floats.

As some of these things pass through your aware-beam you become conscious of them. At will, you can focus your aware-beam all around your boat to see something of what's going on down in your subconscious-ocean.

You can focus your aware-beam on potentially dangerous things like deep-hidden fears or on habits and personality mannerisms.

Let's say you've focused your aware-beam on a live, floating mine (which is just our figure of speech to represent a potentially dangerous fear). As soon as the mine is in your aware-beam, you can cope with it. You can pull it into your conscious mind, examine it, find its detonator and remove it. The mine-fear then ceases to be an instrument of potential destruction. You can safely throw the pieces back, and they will sink to the bottom of your subconscious-ocean.

Or let's say that with your aware-beam you spot a bad habit-wave, such as poor posture, sloppy walking or incorrect breathing.

After focusing your aware-beam on the bad habit, you can use what is called:

THE LAW OF SUBSTITUTION

to correct the bad habit. You start by constructing a good habit pattern in the conscious mind. By your conscious perseverance the new "good habit" pattern will be absorbed into the subconscious, replacing the old bad habit.

You can also use the law of substitution in dealing with undesirable personality traits. While fears, bad habits, undesirable personality traits, etc., are within your aware-beam, you may know they're there—and yet refuse to recognize them. Figuratively, you hold your hand up in front of your eyes, like a blinder, to hide from yourself whatever you don't want to see.

We will refer to this, figuratively, as a hand-inhibition.

It's up to you to overcome and consciously dispense with your hand-inhibitions and look squarely at what is within the focus of your aware-beam. By using the law of substitution, you can transform your liabilities into assets.

Now, since all these traits and habits—regarding the conscious and subconscious—are true of our personalities in real life, it stands to reason that they should exist in every character an actor creates.

To ring true, a character's "personality" should be made up of habits, fears, gratifications, inhibitions, complexes, personality mannerisms and traits, etc. These should consciously be built into the character's subconscious: by the actor.

This is creativity.

With all the imagination and training at his command, the actor should set aside his own personality and—as far as possbile —represent the character's personality.

TO DO THIS—HE USES THE LAW OF SUBSTITUTION.

By substituting the character's personality for his own, the actor establishes a common denominator, a connector, between an invented image and its interpreted reality.

This is CONSCIOUS-subconscious technique.

As you progress with these mechanical exercises, focus your aware-beam steadily on each new element we take up—in the science underlying the actor's art.

The brightness, scope and penetrating power of each person's aware-beam is in accordance with his intelligence. The greater the intelligence that powers your desire and drive, the brighter your aware-beam will shine; the deeper it will penetrate the subconscious; the wider will be the area it can illuminate.

Keep yourself alert to the many uses of the law of substitution. It is within this law that a teacher can change and develop an unfulfilled personality into an exciting personality.

The law of substitution is an important part of the formula used to develop a plain, average boy or girl from any walk of life into a big star.

But—without an indestructible inner urge, without great desire and drive, without great singleness of purpose—no teacher on earth can make a star of anyone.

To help you learn—you can always make use of these two important facts:

1. Your subconscious, your system itself, learns during periods of relaxation.

2. Your conscious self learns during periods of concentration.

These are important tools for the actor.

These are the words to remember from this chapter:

Habit-wave
Aware-beam
Hand-inhibition
Habit pattern
Personality mannerism

Law of substitution Conscious mind (boat) Subconscious mind (ocean)

Once you've absorbed this chapter, you'll be surprised by the added values you will find.

Have FAITH in what you learn and you will become AWARE of the truth that is fully revealed in UNDERSTANDING.

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