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Parvez Akhtar's post -
The relationship between actor and character is dialectical. It may sound tempting to say that the unity or integration of the actor and the character is the criterion of the best acting. But on a practical level this is not possible. Dilip Kumar, Balraj Sahni or Naseeruddin Shah are the best actors because they are more critical of the character than others. They are able to translate the finer physical and spiritual characteristics of a particular character into their own experience with conscious effort and reasoning. They never introduce a character exactly (or actually they can't); rather they present a stylized version of that particular character. It is because of his deep belief in this stylization of his character that the audience also accepts the character played by that actor as he is. Ben Kingsley is a fine actor, but in the film 'Gandhi' he creates a distinctive stylized version of Gandhi, which is not the real Mahatma Gandhi, but rather an act of Gandhi performed by Kingsley. Another example can be given from stage performance of 'Bapu' from Natmandap (Patna), in which veteran Bihar actor Javed Akhtar Khan invents such a stylization of Mahatma Gandhi; which, passing through the experience of the viewer, creates reality for them.
Similarly Naseeruddin Shah, Annu Kapoor or Dilip Prabhavalkar present a different version of Gandhi's style. According to B. V. Karanth "stylization, at its climax transforms into realistic effect." The stylized-acting of Savitri Devi (Manipur) is also a strong example of this.
Vijay Singh's reply -
Some impressions after reading
your post:
*Stylized performance is not the
exactness. True. It means the character is a separate entity and the actor is
always striving to ‘become’ that entity which is actually separate from
her/him. A performance is only a meeting point of the actor and the character.*
1. Your
piece implies that the actor and character are both in conversation with each
other which you have termed here as ‘dialectical’. Dialectical needs to have
two sides – the actor and the character, in a reasoned argument with each
other.
2. During
this argument, at some point, both of them ‘meet’. This meeting can be either an
agreement or a friction between the two. This meeting point or the ‘point of
interference’ is played out in the performance, which means, the actor and the
character are still separate entities, only it is the performance that brings
them both together, not completely but to some extent. That is why no exactness
can be achieved in portraying a character.
3. But
this separate entity of character, independent of the actor is always there. An
actor always tries to approach a character based on some analysis of the
conditions and given circumstances, but could only manage to reach a point of
interference. So there is a ‘self’ of the character and there is a ‘self’ of
the actor. The actor is reaching out to the character with her or his efforts.
4. I
believe that the character would also be trying to reach out to the actor and
find a voice find an expression through her/him. The success is limited. This
limit brings different shades of a character in each performance. So on stage,
the ‘self’ of an actor is a ‘stylized version of a character’. To explain this
you have given example of a historic character whose life has been much
documented. I think I will have to watch the movie ‘Sanju’ where the actor is
playing another actor who is very much around (and might even have come to
witness the shooting or process of the making of the character).
5. However, when a character is purely imaginative,
it has a different yardstick. To my belief a character would always be
somewhere in this universe in her/his physical, mental and psychological
exactness. An actor would always strive to reach out up there. Even this character (Gandhi) may also be
played as an imaginative one. May be the character Sanju would have been played
as an imaginative character.
6. So what does the actor do? He first creates a
replica of the character which he is given to portray according to the
conditions and given circumstances, and then s/he would create a path to reach
out to that character and sort of merge into that.
