Mind & behavior · 2024
When can drawing on personal emotional memories become a trap for an actor?
In the author's account, drawing on emotional memories became a trap when it became impossible to clearly separate the self from a role, leading to an emotional response where objectivity was needed. The article explores this tension through a personal acting experience and a fictional character's failures in art and love.
Details
The article discusses affective memory and its implications for acting. It analyses two cases to explore how this potentially important tool for artists can sometimes become a trap.
The first case concerns Andrei Mavrodin, a character in a novel by Mircea Eliade. He fails both in art and in love: although he uses affective memory to build his fictional characters, he does not manage to do the same in his romantic relationship. He has a preconstructed image of what an artist should be and chooses to act out that image, hurting both his lover and himself.
The second case is the author's personal experience. Early in their acting career, the author drew on affective memory to construct a role in a one-man show. However, they became unable to clearly separate themselves from the role they were playing—in other words, they acted emotionally in a situation that called for objectivity.
Through this analysis of a fictional case and a personal experience, the study aims to examine in depth the dual nature of affective memory: when used as a source for artistic work, it can easily shift from a tool into a trap.
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