4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

magnitudes of performance 315
from the composed, performed facial displays would not be less
pronounced or in any way markedly different from those of the
muscle-by-muscle enactment of the “natural” emotions tested by
Ekman. Aesthetic acting, learned from the outside, “composed” and
culturally determined, penetrates deep into the brain. What was at the
start of training an external effect becomes during the course of training
an internal cause. As Padmanathan Nair, one of the best kathakali
actors, told me in 1976: “A good actor is the one who understands the
character very well, thus becoming the character itself. . . . [But] we
should not forget ourselves while acting. While acting, half of the actor
is the role he does and half will be himself.” Bertolt Brecht, so affected
by Chinese acting, would have been very pleased with Nair’s answer.
The “half actor” who is the role is the one who has internalized the
fixed gesture patterns of kathakali; the “half actor” who is himself is
the one observing, manipulating, and enjoying the actions of the other
half. To achieve this kind of acting it is necessary to assimilate into the
body the precise second-by-second details of performing. In kathakali,
at least, this kind of mastery begins mechanically, à la Ekman; “feeling”
at the experiential and/or ANS level comes later.
LYING AND THE PERFORMER’S THREE HALVES
A depiction not merely of emotions, but of emotions that can easily be
recognized, that can be composed and communicated – the raw
material of theater wherever it is found – is also the stuff lies are made
of. As Ekman points out the face is not only a truth-teller but a liar
without peer. And lying, as much as truth-telling, is the stock in trade
of theater.
The face appears to be the most skilled nonverbal communicator
and perhaps for that reason the best “nonverbal liar,” capable not only
of withholding information but of simulating the facial behavior
associated with a feeling which the person is in no way experiencing.
(Ekman 1972: 23)
Here the Ekman of 1972 does not yet know what the Ekman of 1983
found out: that the “mechanical” construction of a face in the