ABSTRACT
Chapter 10, ‘Imagining the character’, looks at certain mental processes leading to the assimilation of actor and fictional character. The chapter examines issues surrounding the uses of intuition in imagining Given Circumstances, the personalisation of stage objects through ‘endowments’ (Hagen) and the affective nature of memory images. Underpinning these processes are the psychoanalytic concepts of phantasy and transference (Freud and Jung) and reverie (Winnicott and Klein). The chapter then goes on to look from a cognitive perspective at how belief in both real and fictional realities is engendered in the mind–brain through the generation of images and stories (Damasio) to the point where we are changed physiologically. The chapter ends by noting that the fascination, as well as the utility of the terminologies used earlier in the book to describe acting experiences, reside in their metaphorical nature. Therefore, it brings to bear on these ‘languages’ the analysis offered by ‘Conceptual Metaphor Theory’ (Lakoff and Johnson) and describes two recent experiments seeking to offer ‘proof of concept’ to the foundational metaphor of body-based acting: psychological action is physical action.
