Ask A Healer Creative Wellbeing Series
Is Crying on Cue a Skill or a Lie? Turning on the Tears, on Command
This content, copyright, Neva. J. Howell
Featured for actors: Be a better actor kit
As an actor, you must have access to a wide range of emotions to be convincing including the ability to be moved to genuine tears if your character would be so moved.
I always tell my students in live classes that, if they are having trouble with a particular emotion, they need to look also at how they
express, or have trouble expressing that same emotion in their lives.
One of the great gifts of acting may be that acting allows you to work through expressing difficult emotions in a safe way and can teach you a lot about yourself
my approach to acting * my criteria for believable acting
Questions about Acting: Hey! So, I'm kind of curious of as how to always stay serious when I'm on stage.
I have always played very depressing roles, and over the summer I had the main role in the play The Glass Menagerie.
I was able to keep a straight face and play a very believable character but for the most part, when I try to think of something sad to form tears, I end up losing focus in what Im doing on stage. Please help!!
Answers about Acting: One of the greatest challenges and actor can face is crying on cue.
Setting the stage for a scene can take hours but you are supposed to cry when the director says action. I can understand why actors, soap opera stars in particular, resort to those drops that make the eyes water and create those perfect tears running down the middle of the eye. It's hard to cry on cue, really hard.
I remember a class with Stephen Tobolowsky where he talked about being directed to cry on cue. He had the courage to tell the director that he did not feel his character would cry there. Now, that took some courage. I'd go further to say what Stephen implied which is if you can't cry, it's better not to cry than to force tears and lose truthful characterization and let the director deal with that reality.
In my opinion, what makes acting real is realness. In other words, if you are trying to think of something sad or form tears, that isn't real. What is probably happening, maybe even at an unconcious level, is that you are worried about being able to cry on cue. I certainly can't do it myself. It's contrary to reality, really.
What I have to do is focus on my character's words and the other people on stage or in front of the camera with me. As I hear the words and watch the person saying them, I let my body respond to them as truthfully as possible.
The time for learning how to respond freely in an emotional scene is not opening night, of course. Better to play and practice during rehearsals and in a good acting class, at times when you can afford to be off the mark.
One example of crying on cue: When I played Lola Faye Barnes in Del Shore's play Daughters of the Lone Star State, there is a scene at the end of act one where my character is completely humiliated and deeply hurt by the fact that someone flushed her homemade banana pudding down the toilet.
Now, this is a broad comedy but Lola Faye doesn't know that. Her reaction must be real.
One night, I was able to cry by watching the particular downturn of the other actor's mouth, in judgment of my character. I focused on that frown of judgment and trying to mentally make it turn up into a smile. My body responded by first agitation and then tears.
In fact, as I'm thinking about this right now, years after my performance, it caused a sudden jerky, teary and spontaneous gasp when I again tried to mentally move that cruel, condemning frown! Use what the other actors in the scene with you so generously provide by their acting choices.
Other nights, it may have
been other things I noticed about my fellow actors that triggered the tears, or a vision of a lone vanilla wafer floating in the toilet surrounded by poop. How very degrading and insulting!
This brings up another reason some of us have more trouble than others crying on cue. It's because we forget to create a memory of what came before.
Had I not walked myself to an imaginary toilet and witnessed the remains of my precious banana pudding floating there, I would not have had what I needed to be
convincing in the next scene.
The audience may not have seen my character find this sacrilege but I, as the character, absolutely had to make it real for myself for them, by making it real for me.
Each performance, I had to find something that would take my character genuinely through the emotions required, from outrage to devastation .... and still keep it funny to watch and not tragic.
That's another thing Stephen Tobolowsky taught me....if you get too real, in a comedy, the audience will
begin to worry about you, and won't laugh. You have to stop short of that much reality in a broad comedy like Daughters.
I've been a director too, and I so often have to shake actor's loose from a rigid rehearsal. They come to the set already knowing how they are going to play the scene and that's death for a play.
An actor's characterization has to be a living, breathing, fresh creation every time or the audience definitely knows it. So, I encourage different line readings, even outrageous ones, to get freshness back into the rehearsal.
Try saying the lines from the feeling of whatever is happening to you.
If you are losing focus on what you are doing on stage, because you are trying to cry, then address your need to focus back on what you are doing on stage, AS THE CHARACTER.
In other words, you character suddenly has a need to remember why they are there at that moment and what they need to do.
All Acting Lessons for Level One - Best done in order.
Lesson One - Introduction to Acting Lessons
Lesson Two - The Actor's Body
Lesson Three - The Actor's Voice
Lesson Four - The Actor's Emotions
Acting Lesson Five - The Actor's Mind
Acting Lesson Six - Believable Acting Tips
Creative Arts Interviews: Shadow Art with Sean Corner > Empowering Sensual Art with Annette E. Banks > Nailing the Audition - Channeled advice from Abraham-Hicks
