Advanced Acting: Style, Character, and Performance (review)

Advanced Acting, Robert Cohen's latest performance textbook, builds on the foundation of ideas and techniques outlined in some of his previously published works, including Acting One and Acting Power. In Advanced Acting, Cohen further develops fundamental principles, such as the actor's use of self, to tackle problems of acting in plays from a variety of styles, genres, and historical eras. Cohen approaches these new challenges through a carefully organized series of exercises that range from simple games and improvised explorations to detailed scene study from a variety of works, including Oedipus, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Misanthrope.

In his introduction, Cohen indicates that Advanced Acting was conceived as the text for the final course in a sequenced acting curriculum. He clearly envisions this sequence as one in which his Acting One, with its emphasis on the actor's physical instrument and imaginative use of self in realistic, contemporary plays, accompanies early coursework. The most recent text outlines a method for approaching the stylistic demands of plays from various periods of theatre history, such as Greek, commedia, Elizabethan, neoclassic, Restoration, Belle Epoque, and contemporary works, such as Angels in America and The Piano Lesson. Even as these more advanced problems are addressed, however, Cohen continues to emphasize the actor's use of self first outlined in Acting One. Indeed, Cohen states that the "subtitle" of the work might easily have been "extensions of yourself," and that the goal of the book is to "show you how to extend yourself into a different century, a different way of speaking. . . . and still be yourself" (xiv).

Advanced Acting is divided into two main sections. Part 1, "The Exercises," is comprised of nine chapters or "lessons" that explore the central and difficult issues of style, characterization, and performance awareness, none of which, Cohen admits, "have an entirely settled definition" (xiv). In each of these lessons, new challenges are posed and terms, such as "style," are clarified. For Cohen, style develops out of "the ways a specific group of characters . . . behave and think within a play" (14). A sequence of exercises or "etudes" designed to develop awareness and hone skills follows. For example, in one set of exercises, Cohen takes a performer through a series of imaginative dialogues with a baby. Cohen creates circumstances in which the actor desperately needs to communicate with the baby and experiences organic impulses to imitate the baby, both verbally and physically. Through this kind of work, the actor discovers Cohen's idea that style is: "useful" rather than decorative; "chosen" as opposed to "automatic" behavior; a "function of the person addressed," not simply a function of the speaker; and "something we learn" rather than something we are (5).

In the next section of the book, a variety of aspects of character are examined, first from an internal perspective and then an external one. In these chapters, the ideas of "intrinsic" and "reciprocal characterization" are alternately explored. In "Playing God," for example, actors discover a sense of character through "reciprocal" exercises where they "play to" their partners by imaginatively changing how they view them (47). In later exercises, actors explore "intrinsic" character choices through physical explorations such as "Character Walks," "Character Voices," "Centering," and "Animal Imagery" (47). By fully integrating both these intrinsic and the reciprocal aspects of the role, Cohen believes that actors can "look through the eyes of the character" (69).

In Part II of the book, seven major periods of Western theatrical history are represented and explored in chronological order. In each of these "lessons," the chapter begins with discussion of "cultural and theatrical patterns" (107) that are embedded in that era's texts, historically, socially, and dramaturgically. It is interesting to note how strongly Cohen emphasizes that a historical foundation is "key to understanding" each work, regardless of where a contemporary production might be set by the director or designer (109-110). Each chapter focuses on particular...