What Is Acting?

Acting is the craft of telling stories on stage.  The actors retell the story of play under the direction of an outside eye who is called the director.  Much confusion and nonsense surrounds the craft of acting, particularly around the topics of character and emotion.  The on-going debate on whether the actor should feel or not feel the emotion for real.  This is debated in Diderot's 'Paradoxe sur le Commedien, William Archer's Marks or Faces, Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares and David Mamet's True and False - amongst many, many many books.

Acting is probably simpler than most make it.  The actor should find a strong objective or action, something like that of the character in the play and tries to achieve it to the best of their abilities within the given circumstances of the play, using the lines (and obviously without the lines) given by the playwright.

Many people, who would like to believe that there is no rules or technique to acting believe it is an 'art', by proclaiming this, they set it apart from the ability to do it.