As you probably know already from your dog-eared copy of “An Actor Prepares,” theater guru Konstantin Stanislavsky believed that “inside each and every word, there is an emotion, a thought, that produced the word and justifies its being there.” Actors are always working on accessing those emotions, whether it’s grief, joy, passion, or anger. But while you’re tapping into all of your feelings, you also need to work on your emotional intelligence: the ability to regulate one’s emotions and recognize those in others.
By understanding how emotions function, “and how your emotions function specifically,” says Janet Neely, who teaches acting at Emerson College, a performer can gain a solid foundation that will enrich their preparation for a role. “It allows you to understand the emotional journey of the role you’re playing and the other characters,” she explains. “[It] enables actors to access a broader range of emotions and comprehend their characters’ motivations.”
After noticing that many of her students who were using Meisner’s repetition exercise had difficulty naming and recognizing emotions in themselves and others, Neely was inspired to develop a curriculum that integrated emotional intelligence into acting training. Drawing on a system devised by the Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence, she has developed exercises to help students recognize, understand, label, express, and shape emotions.
How to Communicate Better as an ActorEmotional intelligence (EI) “helps reframe emotions as something you have, not something you are, so you can feel empowered to shape them in your craft,” Neely says. “One of the first things I have actors do when learning about EI is to say, ‘I feel angry,’ for instance, rather than ‘I am angry.’ ”
Emotional intelligence can help actors recover from the psychological hangover that often comes with playing a challenging role. To tap into the emotions that motivated the supervillain Killmonger in Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther” (2018), Michael B. Jordan prepared by alienating himself from others and shutting out their affections. “When it was all over, I think just being in that kind of mind state…it caught up with me,” he told Oprah Winfrey. “It was tough for me for a minute—just readjusting to being around the people that care about me, getting that love that I shut out for a long time.”
“In most acting techniques, emotions are a product, not the focus,” says Neely. “Without thoroughly understanding emotions and their dynamics, these techniques can exploit an actor’s emotional life rather than safely mine it. They can also be triggering and potentially tap into unresolved trauma, which can have severe implications for an actor’s mental health.”
Some of the exercises Neely recommends for actors include recording their emotions in a journal, completing an “emotional autobiography” that examines the messages they’ve internalized, group exercises that focus on labeling and understanding feelings, and theater games that focus on exploring and expressing a particular emotion.
Ultimately, Neely would like to see emotional intelligence coordinators on set acting “as a coach, confidant, and emotional security blanket,” and helping to provide “a safe space for actors to deliver powerful and nuanced performances, especially when intense emotions are required.” Until then, she says, any actor could benefit from viewing emotional intelligence as “foundational, similar to training your voice and your body, analyzing a script, or memorizing your lines.”
Janet Neely is an educator at Emerson College, the Boston Conservatory, and Salem State University. Her courses include Perspectives on World Dance, Intro to Acting, Voice and Movement, Scene Study, Industrial Psychology, Communications, and Public Speaking.
