Good Acting (Speaking: 1240L; CEFR B2)
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Listen to a speaker read the passage aloud. You do not need to read aloud.
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When we watch a powerful drama at the theater or on our screens, we can get drawn into the story and forget we are watching a work of fiction. How does this magic happen? There are many factors involved, but a crucial part of any successful drama is good acting. What exactly is involved in good acting is an interesting and much debated question.
On a very basic level, actors memorize lines and deliver them to a camera or an audience at the appropriate time. However, a good memory and an accurate delivery of lines is only part of the story. Those who are truly gifted in acting possess an excellent command of a variety of emotions. This allows them to give credible portrayals of characters in many different emotional states. Great actors don't just speak the lines of characters; they devote their entire beings to living the characters' experiences. If a character is suffering, the actor will suffer too. If a character falls in love, the actor will aim to bring some love to the role. That is how actors get the audience to feel the characters.
Actors involved in scenes of extreme emotion may need several minutes or even hours to recover from traveling deep into their roles. This ability to achieve complete understanding of a character is accomplished through training. There are certainly different schools of acting and therefore different types of training. One acting method that is perhaps most popular today requires the performance to be emotionally realistic. In this method, the actor explores personal experiences to create lasting emotional memories. It is from these memories that the actor finds the ability to act out the dramas that entertain, educate, and enlighten us.
So the next time you watch your favorite TV drama, perhaps you could take a moment to stand back from the action and think about how the characters are actually actors. Think about how much work is involved behind the scenes to bring the drama to life. Then forget all that and get lost in the story again.
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