How do I act like I'm in varying degrees of pain/discomfort as well as waking up?

Question

Elliott Jackson · Accepted Answer

You are asking HOW to do your ACTIONS.

This is where your Creative Individuality comes out to play. The script or Director says you should feel miserable, due to problems you may have. Those could be disease or injury or a relationship breaking up or a lot of other things. Think about what makes YOU miserable. How does that look? Of course, you do not watch yourself when you are miserable, but you do watch others. How do they look?

But, you are deciding here HOW to perform an ACTION. No one will know how YOU feel. They will look at your action and imagine in their own minds how your character might feel. They will interpret what your actions mean to them. SO, HOW do you do those ACTIONS?

Is your Director wanting it to look like "real" sickness? If so, then what does real sickness look like to them? I would suggest that there is no such thing as a real look for sickness. Every person on Earth has a personal way of looking sick. We each have our own threshold for pain and how we act when we reach that threshold is unique to us. BUT, there are some archetypal actions that appear in a large number of people who feel sick. And you see those on TV. Otherwise, think about your own family or girlfriend or even a close friend. Can you usually tell when they might feel sick? If so, what does that look like to you?

So a headache is very hard to show IF it is a normal stress headache that is all in your head with no outward signs. A mild headache does not usually show with anyone - you have to tell someone you have one. With this, there are a few subtle moves you might make with your hands and body. Your eyes are a little closed because you avoid light. You might wince from noises because they seem too loud. I know that I sometimes hold or rub the area oh my head that hurts. It seems to help. And that can be seen.

NOW if you upgrade that headache to a migraine headache, then that always has observable outward symptoms, which include the ones we talked about, but also include real sickness, nausea, pain in the body, throbbing head pain that makes you hold your head and put it under the covers.

Back pain is normally very visible, and you may not have had much of this at your age. Especially if it is lower back pain, it affects your whole body so you simply stop everything you are doing to find the most STILLNESS to avoid that pain. It is excruciating. If you do not move, you do not hurt. Do you go to bed? I do. When my back hurts, everything else stops until I can stop that pain.

Fever is an internal feeling - you are hot all over your body. You can't show that unless it causes you to sweat heavily or makes your skin red. But fever sometimes creates visible symptoms that can be seen. Heavy Sweat. Your whole body feels extra-sensitive, so you try to be quiet, still and avoid the aching in your bones. What if you have a cold or flu? Of course, then you feel headache symptoms and body aches, but you also are coughing, with a blocked nose from snot, and this affects your voice and how you react to others. You cannot hear well with a cold or flu. So that affects how you interact with everyone around you. Imagine that difficulty with communicating with your family and friends. Act that.

Sometimes you have to imagine what something looks like in order to create that physically. Observe what someone looks like when they really feel sick, not what they look like on TV. Why do I say that? Because how someone looks on TV is their act - it is THEIR CREATIVE INDIVIDUALITY. They're not really sick. So whatever they do to look sick is THEIR IMAGINATION. If you try to do that, you're just copying them. It is not what everyone looks like, and probably not what you look like. BUT, of course, they may also be acting the archetypal sickness actions. If that's okay with your director, then maybe that is what you need to do. But it will not be YOUR CREATIVE INDIVIDUALITY. It will be theirs.

One of the things that is not written much about in Chekhov's or other books is OBSERVATION. But it is part of most every actor training system, even if they don't say it. Chekhov said to observe life. Look at other people, animals and nature doing things. How do they look? How does that look change when they're feeling sick? Even a sick tree looks and acts differently. Is that something you can imagine for yourself?

When you get into that acting moment when you're supposed to look sick, use Chekhov's Imaginary Body tool. Imagine what your character looks like when they feel sick. How does their overall Personal Atmosphere change? Define your symptoms (outward actions) in detail based on your imagination. Embed that look into your mind as you begin to act and then forget what you look like -- simply do those actions. Forget what you "feel." Just let that imaginary body of the sick man create the image of you reacting to those symptoms. You feel hot. Your head hurts. Your nose is running. You talk funny, you can't hear, you don't want to look at anyone, you just want someone to put you to bed, rub your chest and go to sleep. Those actions make you look sick.

There's also ATMOSPHERE. What is the atmosphere in your house when someone is feeling sick? It can be overpowering to everyone who comes in, even if they don't feel sick. It is like the symptoms of the sick person leaks out into the room and everyone feels that. So imagine that atmosphere is in the space where you are acting. Let that imaginary atmosphere invade your senses. That will make your actions more intense.

AND THIS WORKS FOR ALL ACTIONS you might need to do in any performance. Imagine the body of your character who might be feeling whatever it is the script or director wants to see. Embed that into your imagination, along with the atmosphere of those symptoms/actions.

You may get the WHAT of how your character is supposed to FEEL and you may be told by script or Director what ACTIONS they want. But, remember above all things, your CREATIVE INDIVIDUALITY tells you HOW you do those ACTIONS. How you act when you are feeling sick is your job - not theirs. And if they say they want some other actions to show that you are sick, then they are saying to you that ARCHETYPAL GESTURES are important to them. They are not interested in "REALITY."