It can be easy to take actors and acting for granted. We often think of the acting profession as a privileged type of opportunity rather than an occupation that requires talent, study, and practice to master and one that provides value to society.
The truth is that acting is a skill that must be consistently honed, nurtured, and practiced. While natural talent certainly plays a role in becoming a successful actor, training and practice are lifelong commitments for anyone who hopes to build a successful career as a thespian.
Acting is a serious profession that provides significant value to society. Let\’s take the time to explore some of the significant ways that acting and actors benefit our individual lives and enhance the society that we live in.
Acting Allows Us To Transport Backward And Forward In Time
Acting acts as a time machine that allows us to be transported back into the past. Actors portray the fictional and non-fictional characters that have played a significant role in shaping our history and our current society. By recreating these historical influencers, they bring important historical events to life for us in a way that history books and history professors cannot do.
The time machine provided by the acting profession travels in both directions, allowing us to be transported into depictions of possible future worlds and societies based on the events of the past and current day.
Acting Provides A Window On Our Current Society
Acting allows us to take a deep, unflinching, and difficult look at current events or the current state of our society. It can be easy to overlook or ignore some of the challenges, injustices, disparities, or other issues in our present-day society, especially when they do not affect our day-to-day lives. Acting provides a window into aspects of our current society that we may not notice during our routine. This allows us to gain a clearer picture of the full scope of how our society is functioning. Through this immersive understanding, we can better see where society is thriving and where there is a need for improvement or reform.
Acting Provides A Window On Our Humanity
Acting can hold up a much-needed mirror that reflects the truth of our humanity. Through the actor\’s representation of the nuanced traits and motivations of characters, both villainous and virtuous, we can recognize parts of the personality of the character being portrayed that may resonate with core aspects of our humanity. Though this can be uncomfortable, it can provide an important opening for insightful self-reflection and self-improvement.
Acting Opens Up The Opportunity For Important Discussions
The social aspect of viewing a movie, television program, or theater production enables us to discuss the content of the work we have just seen. This opens the door to discussing the interactions between the characters portrayed by the actors and the social context in which the story takes place.
Acting provides the vehicle to open discussions that we might not otherwise have with those closest to us. Acting also opens up the opportunity to have broader discussions as a society about the issues presented within a popular movie, television program, or theater production.
Acting Helps Us To Explore Other Cultures And Worlds
Acting introduces us to worlds and cultures far beyond the borders of our society. The roles portrayed by actors lean more about people\’s everyday lives in distant lands. This experience helps to personalize the lives of others and helps us to understand their lives and experiences better.
By taking us outside of our comfortable little bubble, we can see how people in other parts of the world live, what they believe, what issues they face, and how all of these things relate to our own lives within our society and culture. In addition, by allowing us to experience other cultures, we can see how our own culture interacts and affects others. This has the added benefit of opening our eyes to the parts of our culture that we may take for granted and the parts of our culture that could stand to be examined and improved.
Acting Helps Us To Understand The Perspective Of Others
Acting helps us to walk in the shoes of another. When the actor immerses themselves fully in the role of the character they are playing, they become that character, and if they are truly good at their craft, they can bring us inside the character\’s mind. A talented actor acting in the role of another character can draw every audience member into the mind of the character that they are playing. For the brief time that we are enjoying the performance, we can view the world through the eyes of another human being, one who may be wholly different from ourselves in every way.
By offering us the opportunity to view the world from the perspective of another, even for a very brief time, acting can make us more empathetic and understanding human beings as we interact with other people in our everyday lives.
Acting Provides An Escape From Life\’s Challenges
Perhaps, more important than any other purpose, acting offers us an escape from our own day-to-day lives\’ pressures, challenges, and stress. This may seem like a relatively small contribution compared to the other ways that acting adds value to our individual lives and society. However, when we feel overwhelmed and stressed out by the myriad of pressures in our own lives, it is difficult for us to reap any of the rewards that come from viewing other perspectives and other cultures. Additionally, when we are feeling overburdened by our concerns and worries, we tend to have a much harder time showing concern for the broader issues affecting society.
By providing us with the means to step away from our stresses and worries, acting allows us to refresh our minds, making us more empathetic and more open to experiencing the many other values that acting provides.
We have talked a great deal about how acting adds value to our individual lives and benefits society at large. So it is only fair that we also look at the many benefits that acting has for the actors who practice the craft.
Acting Builds Confidence
This one is fairly obvious; it takes quite a bit of self-confidence and bravery to stand on a stage, in front of a camera, or the casting director\’s office and perform a monologue or an emotional scene. However, once young actors have attended their first acting classes for beginners, they will have already begun building the foundation of self-confidence that will serve them well throughout their professional and personal lives.
Acting Teaches The Value Of Cooperation
Acting requires the individual cast members and crew to interact with one another. Each actor must know their role and work with the other cast members to create fully-fleshed characters with the emotion and nuanced personality traits that bring the story to life for the audience. As they play their characters, the interaction between the actors truly creates the immersive world of the film or stage production.
Acting Nurtures Resilience
We are all familiar with the phrase, \”The show must go on!\” This motto is a defining philosophy of the acting profession. Countless little details can, and often do, go awry during a film or stage production. However, when these little events occur, the actors must be able to roll with punches and keep the performance moving.
Acting classes prepare students to adapt and improvise to prepare for anything that comes their way on stage or in front of the camera. This is one area where online acting classes may have a distinct benefit over traditional acting classes. For example, we all know how often technical glitches and interruptions in connectivity seem to pop up when we are working or learning online. Online acting classes teach students to recognize when another actor is experiencing a glitch. They are encouraged to improvise, helping them build the resilience needed for a successful acting career.
Acting Improves Public Speaking And Poise
Finally, acting helps to improve public speaking skills and poise. Whether enrolling a young child in children\’s acting classes or a teen or young adult in traditional or online acting classes, your child or young adult will develop the poise and public speaking prowess that they will be able to use regardless of their career path eventually leads.
Visit The Actors In Action Conservatory Today!
If you are interested in enrolling in acting classes for yourself, or a young adult, or enrolling a child in children\’s acting classes, make sure you come to check out Actors In Action Conservatory. Our team of talented, experienced actors offers in-person acting classes in Salt Lake City and online acting classes accessible from anywhere in the world. We would love to meet you and show you how acting can benefit your life and the lives of your family, friends, and community.