A Theory of Actor;

DON MIXON

All the worlds a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
Shakespeare was neither the first nor the last to voice the comparison. The
metaphor is apt and, as developed in Jaquess speech, readily understand-
able.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
Looking over a lifetime the ages passed through are so distinct-infant,
schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, old man, and finally sans everything-
its as if Jaques is describing seven different people. Or an actor playing
seven roles.
Writers ancient and modem, by treating the world as a theatre in which
people are engaged in producing and presenting performances, in playing
roles, did and do hope to gain insight and understanding into the human
condition. Yet despite the aptness of the metaphor, there is something a bit
strange about making the world a stage. Ordinarily its the other way
around : from the beginning the stage has been a place that imitates, reflects
the world. Hamlet to the Players: . . . the purpose of playing, whose end,
both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as twerc; the mirror up to
nature. The stage is a world. By turning the world into a stage, to hold, as
twere, the mirror up to the stage, we find a mirror reflecting a mirror.
Reflections of reflections are fascinating, but can be confusing. And models
are not meant to confuse. Certainly scimtijic models are not meant to con-
fuse. On the contrary. But strange as it may at first seem, the double reflec-
tion is a common move, not an aberration of the theatre metaphor. Even the
root metaphor that has dominated modem western thought and scientific
practice involves more than one reflection. The machine imitates, perfects,
simplifies, mirrors human properties. Holding a mirror up to the machine is
like holding a mirror up to the theatre, except that the machine reflects less
of the world than does theatre.
Theatre, the machine, and countless other constructions are used as meta-
phors, analogies, and models in conversation, in science, in art. Analogical
thinking is the fundamental tool of human understanding, a mode of
98 Don Mixon
thought that enables us to come to understand something (the source) by
comparing it to something already understood (the model) (Harrk, 1972;
Mixon, 1979). If we wish to understand ill-understood aspects of the world
(the source), we do not simply observe those aspects, we relate them to
something we already understand (the model), Machines have proven popu-
lar models in part because we understand them so thoroughly. We under-
stand machines because people make, people fabricate them. What better
way to know how something works than to construct it? In much the same
way it might be said that we understand actions on the stage-because
people make, people fabricate them.
But theres a difference. And in that difference lies the chief weakness of
contemporary attempts to use the theatre as an analogy or model. When the
theatre analogy is employed the actor, that deliberate maker or fabricator of
actions, serves as a model of a person. As model the actor serves as the
well-understood half of the analogy. But do we understand how actors make
actions? The skills actors must have to successfully fabricate actions are
neither appreciated nor understood. The failure to understand acting skills is
unimportant so long as we are talking about those roles circumstance re-
quires us to play and wish to do no more than comment that, like a player,
one man in his time plays many parts. But people do more than play
many parts. They also can and do fail in their attempts to make actions, to
bring off roles. If we wish to use the theatre analogy to understand everyday
failures of role and action (the source) we must understand how players (the
model) succeed and fail in the parts they play, the actions they fabricate.
Unfortunately most users of the theatre analogy do not fully appreciate that
a players successful fabrications are dependent upon an array of skills. Wri-
ters discuss acting as if there is nothing to the making of actions; actors just
do them. To the extent that the process of making actions is obscure, the
actor fails as a model. Little enlightenment can be gained from comparing
something you dont understand with another something you dont under-
stand.
The chief work of this paper is directed toward identifymg those skills
upon which acting is based and to constructing a model of a stage actor that
can serve as the understood half of a metaphor, analogy, or model. The
model explains how actors act only in the sense of describing those skills
upon which believable acting is contingent. It will be assumed that the
actions of people in social life are contingent upon similar skills.

O N THE IDEAL-TYPICAL NATURE OF MODELS

Mention of making or fahricating actions places this effort within the context
of attempts to study human agency. The effort to come to grips with behav-
 A Thoty of Actors 99
iour by likening people to machines is going sour. As a replacement for the
machine a new model, the intending, choosing, self-monitoring agent, is
offered. But use of the agent shows signs of falling into the same error as use
of the machine. The ideal-typical nature of such constructs or models is
forgotten or ignored. There might be life still in the machine-model except
that adherents have fallen into believing that people are machines-
forgetting that machines are imitations, perfections, and simplifications of
some human properties. I sense a similar danger with the agent-model.
People can intend and choose, and engage in self-monitoring-at times; on
other occasions they cannot. Like mechanism, agency is part, not all, of the
human condition.
Max Weber clearly identified the danger of failing to see the ideal typical
nature of a model. Writing of the fate of the market model in economics
Weber pointed out: The extreme free-traders, however, conceived of it as
an adequate picture of natural reality, i.e., reality not distorted by human
stupidity, and they proceeded to set it up as a moral imperative-as a valid
normative ideal-whereas it is only a convenient ideal type to be used in
empirical analysis (1949, p. 44). The Machine and the Agent each have
been conceived as an adequate picture of natural reality. Neither is. Nor
is the Actor. I shall construct an ideal-typical Actor capable of producing on
stage, believably and convincingly, any conceivable action. By showing how
the powers such a construction requires clearly exceed human capability
(indeed, are impossible) I hope to make its ideal-typical nature diEcult to
ignore.

LIMITS ON ACTION

The machine-model has been more than a convenient ideal type-

mechanism has been the root metaphor of science and world view of modern
western civilization. According to the philosopher Stephen Pepper (1942)
mechanism is one of four relatively adequate world theories-the others
being formism, contextualism, and organicism. Mechanisms attendant mode
of explanation-linear causality-is our favored way of thinking and, of
course, dominates behavioural research. Even users of the theatre analogy
seldom prove exceptions : their actors are machine-like and roles are deter-
mined by causal necessity. As I hope to make clear, the machine is an apt
metaphor only for what is least interesting in theatre. For example, an
essential criterion for successful performance is spontaneity. A theatrical per-
formance without spontaneity is dead, is mechanical. Spontaneity contra-
dicts mechanism: another metaphor is needed. And in order to fully develop
other ways of thinking about explanation that metaphor should be placed in
the context of another world view or root metaphor.
100 Don Mixon
Theodore Sarbin (1977) has made a case for psychologys adopting a
contextualist root metaphor. Explication of contextualism is beyond the
scope of-this paper. Sufice it to say that in contrast to mechanisms preoccu-
pation with antecedent variables, contextualism is concerned with questions
designed to establish degree of evitability as in a convincing play or novel, is
synthetic rather than analytic. Within such a framework the ideal-typical
Actor prompts questions not of causes as antecedent variables, but of powers
as causes (Harrb & Secord, 1972; Harrb & Madden, 1975); not familiar
questions such as given condition A what are the effects of B on Xs
behaviour, attitude, opinion, etc.?, but given context A what can X do?
That is: What are the possibilities (if any) for action at a given time for a
given person? The possibilities for an action are revealed by showing the
limits on it. Limits on action are multiple: physical, biological, social, legal,
logical, etc. A complete account of limits might include contributions from
every discipline that deals with human capacity-a network of contexts
within contexts. Although the necessary network of contexts can be estab-
lished by using all parts of the theatre analogy, I shall deal directly with but
one of them: the limits on action that are related to the actors person and to
acting skills.
An account of limits on action looks decidedly different than an account of
the limits on physical movement-even though the action and the move-
ment might share the same physical properties. For example, any awake and
able person with a finger and a nose can do the physical movement of
picking the nose. Such a private movement may have no more meaning and
have no more limits on it than are on the movement a dog makes scratching
its ear. The presence of others can transform the movement into an action.
As a public action, although physically possible, character and situation
combine to drastically limit its possibility. Thus, whereas a description of the
limits on movement may be done in physical terms, a description of the
limits on action must include such restraining factors as habit, character,
and context.
A study of limits resembles the study of negative restraints Gregory Bate-
son (1972) identifies as a characteristic of cybernetic explanation. Cyber-
netics mode of explanation is an example of what James Ogilvy calls
relational thinking. Rather than appeal to positive causes supposedly
emanating from singular substances, . . . relational thought . . . appeals to
networks of negative restraints (1979, p. 26).
The ideal-typical Actor is designed to bring into focus a central factor of
the human condition: that, unlike the ideal-typical Actor, at any given
moment all of us are limited in what we can do and who we can be. The
question connected with this condition asks: what are the limits? Establishing
limits answers an equally interesting question : what are the possibilities for
action and being? The ideal-typical Actor and relational thinking permit
 A Thoty of Actors 101
questions that cannot be answered as long as our thinking stays within
mechanistic boundaries.

T H E TWOFOLD NATURE OF ACTION

One advantage of using theatre, particularly the conventional stage, as an

analogy is that it makes clear in a special way the twofold nature of an
action. Any action has two components: what is done and the way (or how)
it is done. Every action must be done in some way. I n practice the two
components appear indivisible. In contrast, stage actions clearly are divisible.
In fact, responsibility for the two parts is divided. What is done is largely
decided before an actor even begins work on a role. The script dictates what
is to be done and puts some limitations on how it is to be done. All that is
left for the actor is to do the words and movements in particular ways. Ways
of action make up the art and skill of acting. That the way words and
movements are done are substantial and vital components of action can be
seen by looking at two productions of the same play. Even though what
Hamlet says and does is the same in two productions of the play, because the
way can vary (within limits) actors can give strikingly different interpret-
ations of the role-resulting in productions made up of what in effect are
dgerent actions.
The twofold nature of action explains why, even in the absence of physical
limitations on the movement component of an action, we often literally
cannot perform the action we wish, we need, to perform. The way it must be
done is not at our disposal. As with so much else this commonplace of
experience has been given uncommon voice by William Shakespeare. In the
second scene of the second act the Player at Hamlets request performs a
speech from a play. Afterwards, Hamlet dismisses the players, Polonius,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and when alone says :
0, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
Whats Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
102 Don Mixon
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing. No, not for a king,

Hamlet is not alone in his failure to do that thing for which he has a most
powerful motive and cue for passion. Part of Everymans condition is an
inability to match motive and action. We all at some time want most desper-
ately to do that thing we cannot do. And most of the time we wish, feebly or
strongly, to be able to do often quite ordinary things we can only imagine or
dream of.
Hamlet could not, but the Player could. Do not be misled. Shakespeare
knew all too well that actors are limited too-vide Hamlets often quoted
speech to the players in Act 111, Scene ii in which he catalogs a variety of
acting faults and limits. Ways of behaving are means and lacking the means
for an action people and players fail to produce it. Ways of behaving are
organized like skills and in common language and the social psychology of
John Dewey (Mixon, 1980) are called habits. An amalgam of habits makes
up a persons character. An actor who wishes to convincingly play a charac-
ter must master that characters skill-like ways of behaving or habits.

THE IDEAL-TYPICAL ACTOR

The chief requirement for an unlimited ideal-typical Actor is that the Actor
be able to convincingly and believably produce any conceivable action.
Since actions have meaning and since the meaning of an action can be
affected by the person doing it an Actor who can produce any action must of
necessity be able to play any conceivable character-no matter how old or
young, how masculine or feminine, how tall or short, how wise or foolish-in
short, any human capable of action. To be believable as a character one
thing the Actor must be able to do is to embody and look like the character.
Although makeup and lighting and other aids toward illusion can greatly
modify appearance this requirement is quite literally physically impossible.
Only an ideal type (or mythical shape-changer) can look like and embody
the enormous range and variety of humankind. I will leave the appearance
requirement as a reminder of the ideal-typical nature of the model and as a
comment of the limits on choice.
The skills to be described as necessary for successful and convincing per-
formance are the skills of a stage actor, not the skills more familiar to
 A Theory of Actors 103
moderns of actors working in recorded media such as motion pictures and
television. For recorded performances successful action often is fortuitous, the
result of doing a scene until, somehow, the actor gets it right. T o be convinc-
ing a stage actor must be able to create successful and spontaneous action
not just once, but night after night. Retakes are possible only in rehearsal.
The task of the stage actor is to take the words provided by the playwright
and the actions dictated by writer and director and make them true to
character, believable, and spontaneous. The skills upon which performance
is based are mundane: the ability to memorize the words of the script and
the physical capacity to do the movements required. But words and move-
ment can be done without skill-unbelievably and mechanically. A suc-
cessful actor is true to character, believable, and spontaneous. The
ideal-typical Actor must be able to be true to any conceivable character, making all
actions believable and spontaneous.

Acting Skills
The acting skills necessary for successful playing can be divided into two
kinds-preperformance skills and performance skills. They differ in that the
preperformance skills, although necessary for believable performance, are
not necessarily observable. To fulfill minimum requirements for successful
performance the ideal-typical Actor must be able to: (Preperformance) per-
ceive any character, perceive the world through any characters senses, think
like any character; and (Performance) embody and move like any character,
speak like any character, express emotion like any character, and do all of
this spontaneously.
Each skill is a fully developed version of a human power or capacity. In
order to master them the Actor must combine the flexibility of a child with
the experience of an adult. The preperformance skills are components of
what social psychologists commonly call role-taking. Francis Fergusson
(1949) graphically renamed the role-taking capacity by calling it the his-
trionic sensibility or the mimetic perception of action and by likening it
to other forms of perception. A script is made up of words. The words give
clues to the nature of the characters in the play. T o put flesh on the sugges-
tions requires a number of qualities including empathy for the character and
knowledge of the characters world. Empathy can fail through lack of sym-
pathy with a character. The need for knowledge becomes particularly clear
when the character to be perceived is from another class or culture. The
words of an Aztec warrior are insufficient clues to his character unless the
Actor understands the cultural and social context in which they are spoken.
The three preperformance skills, though listed separately, are interdepen-
dent. The actor cannot go inside and perceive the world through a charac-
ters senses unless the character can be perceived. At the same time the
104 Don Mixon
character cannot be perceived unless the Actor can go inside and perceive
the world through the characters senses. All of us have preperformance or
role-taking skills to some degree. I n order to fulfill the stipulation of being
able to produce any action the Actor must be able to perceive any character,
perceive the world through any characters senses, and think like any char-
acter.
Performance skills are what are commonly thought of as acting skills. In
order to describe them I have divided them into four. Like preperformance
skills, performance skills depend on each other and in turn depend on the
preperformance skills.
Characters (like people) have bodies-bodies as individual as fingerprints.
Indeed, more individual. Fingerprints are given by heredity, whereas heredity
is only part of what makes bodies. But more important for characterization is
that experience gets built into tissue, nerve, and bone. The signs of physical
experience are easily shown by taking the extreme case of young boys who in
former times were used as chimney sweeps :
Six was considered a nice trainable age, but boys of from four and five years old
were driven up soot-caked chimneys which sometimes were only nine inches square,
and which went up as high as sixty feet. They worked their way aloft by pressing
their knees against the walls of the chimney and easing their bodies up, their arms
extended above them; and with the aid of rough scrapers they loosened the encrusta-
tions of soot . . . Sooner or later, constant pressure of the knees against the chimney
walls and the corkscrew motion of ascent served to dislodge the kneecap, leaving the
boys legs deformed ; and carrying a thirty-pound bag of soot did not make his ankles
and back any straighter (Turner, 1966, pp. 39 & 42).
If he lived so long, a teen-aged chimney sweep often found himself a
bandy-legged hunchback (Turner, 1966, p. 42). More common examples
are the scholars who spend so much time bent intently over books or pen
and paper that they can no longer straighten up or see clearly at a distance.
Not simply physical experience, but also emotional and social experience
register on and in the body. Wilhelm Reich (1948) described the process
with the apt metaphor character armour and devised therapeutic tech-
niques for attempting to remove the blocks in muscle and tissue that hold the
armour in place. We armour ourselves against the slights and pains of life,
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. O r as Eugene Gendlin puts it,
we become a monument to all the things that are wrong, every moment
(1981, p. 73). A common example is the depressive/submissive posture almost
universal in citizens of the modern industrial state : head forward, shoulders
curved forward, back bent, and to keep from overbalancing and falling on
the nose, an exaggerated curve in the spine.
The character armour is semipermanent and not something that can be
taken off like medieval battle dress. (Bill Noble has reminded me that al-
though medieval armour can be taken off, if worn long enough it undoub-
 A TheoTy of Actors 105
tedly molded bodies). Semipermanent rather than permanent because
methods have been devised to help people regain the birthright of a bal-
anced, poised, prearmoured body (e.g., the Alexander Technique, Bioener-
getics, Rolfing). All methods take time and vary in degrees of success. At any
given moment we are trapped in our armour. Not only that but the armour
has become us. Other ways of embodying and moving feel wrong and unna-
tural.
To play all characters the Actor must have an unarmoured body. An
unarmoured body can temporarily take on armour. The unarmoured Actor
with some degree of comfort can play a hunchback. The reverse is not the
case. The armoured bodys armour limits that persons capacity to take on
another body. Movement is similarly restricted by the semipermanent
armour.
I have dwelt at some length with embodiment and movement because of
the wish for a vivid example of how at any given moment habit/skill limits
the possibility for action. A persons body armour provides a kind of base-
line. We act from our armoured baseline and any movement takes its form
and meaning from the armoured base. A gesture of defiance from an habit-
ually submissive base will look different (and have different meaning) than a
gesture of defiance from an habitually proud base. The armour can prevent
some types of movement and thus some types of meaning and thus some
kinds of actions. An example of 1950s U.S. sick humour went on at
interminable length and detail about the shy and lonely hunchback who
meets a handsome and titled Prince Charming who to her astonishment and
delight not only falls in love with but marries her. The enchanted honey-
moon on board a transatlantic liner sailing for England builds in excitement
as the ship approaches the dock. Intoxicated with bliss the hunchback asks
her husband if there is anything she can d o to prepare for the impending
meeting with his parents. He replies, Yes, darling. Just stand up straight.
Speech is similarly stamped with semipermanent armour. The Actor must
be able believably to do anyones voice and accent. Most people can speak
comfortably only in the way they habitually speak. Any departure in tempo,
pitch, rhythm, accent, etc. will feel unnatural. Anyone who has ever tried to
change their way of speaking will recognize the difficulty: old speech habits
intrude. Shaws play Pygmalion shows both how speech habits are essential to
believable action and how difficult it is to change them. In order to adopt
any voice the Actor must have no blocks on tongue or throat, must be
wedded to no single way of speaking and, operating from a base of full,
fluent, regionless speech, must be able to feel that any vocal habit is natu-
ral in the right circumstances. To use another extreme example: the Actor
can comfortably play a stutterer; no act of will or determination will enable
the stutterer to approximate the Actors full, fluent, and unfettered way of
speaking.
106 Don Mixon
Emotion is expressed by body and voice and shares their armour. People
express emotion in their own characteristic ways. A person who habitually
expresses warmth with a timid smile and a touch will find it unnatural to
do so with a bear hug and wet kisses. The Actor must be able to believably
express the full range of human emotion in any way emotion has ever been
or can be expressed. If Shakespeares script calls for the Players face to go
white and tears to come to his eyes then the Player must blanch and weep.
For the purposes of the ideal-typical model I neednt discuss the old contro-
versy concerning whether or not great actors feel the emotions they express.
The subjective feelings of actors are not a criterion of successful performance.
The feelings roused in the audience are. Where the play requires true emo-
tion it must ring true, otherwise the audience will not feel and the scene will
be lost. Emotion cannot be fettered or armoured. The Actor must be fluent
in and comfortable with the entire range of emotional expression.
People vary greatly in their capacity for spontaneity. Some seem in their
every response as mechanical as robots. For a play to come to life the Actor
must be able to react spontaneously, night after night, to the same words,
the same physical movements. T o the extent that actors fail to be sponta-
neous the play will be dull and mechanical. How an actor can be sponta-
neous in something as well rehearsed and predetermined as a stage play
might seem to be one of the mysteries of theatre. If every word and move-
ment is the same in each performance where can spontaneity come from?
The answer given by my own teachers, Jasper Deeter and Rose Schulman, is
something they called listening. I was at first baffled and annoyed when,
while performing a classroom scene, I would be told I was not listening.
Nonsense, I thought, I heard every word the actress said. I can say them
by heart. Gradually I realized that what I was failing to hear was the way
the words were said. And that listening applied to all the senses, not
simply hearing. For although the words, the actors, and the movements
might be the same in truth nothing in theatre (as in life) is ever precisely
the same. There are always differences, no matter how slight, in the way
things are said and done. There are differences in audience, in atmosphere,
in odors, in energy, etc. Spontaneity comes when an actor can be fully alert,
not only with the ear, but with the eye, the nose, the kinesthetic sense, even
the taste, to minute, second by second differences that always are there. If we
know people who seem to go through life without spontaneity it is because
they have learned to respond only to the sameness of things.
Notes on acting training. The following brief survey is included to give a
rough idea of the sort of training needed to develop even ordinary acting
skills. Some acting skills, particularly those dealing with body and voice,
have qualities unlike what we ordinarily think of as skills. When we master a
skill such as swimming or chess we add a skill to a repertory of existing skills.
But in order to acquire an unarmoured body or an unfettered voice we first
 A Theory of Actors 107
must break already existing, nearly intractable bodily and vocal habits. It
can be uncommonly difficult to take off armour or loosen fetters. I n the
process actors remake themselves. Since theoretical guidance has been weak
and the need for the various skills strong, as a matter of necessity actors in
every age have tried anything that promised to work. For example, flex-
ibility is a key acting requirement. Since the human child is the most flexible
of beings schools of acting urge and aid their students to attempt to become
as little children. Children commonly exercise preperformance and per-
formance capacities in play and games. Actors engage in their own sort of
play and games in the hope of bringing the capacities to the level of skill.
Concerning embodiment and movement actors have tried anything and
everything that promises greater flexibility-fencing, dance, exercise-the
list could go on and on. I find that both practically and theoretically the
body work invented and perfected by F. M. Alexander (seeJones, 1976) is of
particular importance to actors. Practically, the Alexander Technique has a
long history of success with both actors and musicians. Theoretically, Alex-
anders approach to bodily flexibility can provide a general model for habit
change (Mixon, 1980). For flexibility of voice actors have taken every kind
of singing lesson and speech lesson. Because they work toward vocal flex-
ibility and not some particular way of speaking or singing, the work of
Kristin Linklater (1976) and Arthur Lessac (1967) seems especially relevant
to actor training. One way of extending the range of emotional expression is
to increase familiarity through practice. Bertram Joseph ( 1960), describing
Shakespeares theatre, shows how one of the chief modes of teaching in
Elizabethan grammar schools involved practice in expressing true emotion.
The sentic cycles of Manfred Clynes (1978) offer a revolutionary approach
to emotional training. Further, Clynes analysis of emotion opens the possi-
bility of the pure expression of emotion and thus explains how one musician
can play a phrase with grace and power and another can play the same
phrase with overwhelming emotional effect. O r one actor can express the
same emotion as another, but with an immeasurable difference in emo-
tional power. Finally, practice in awakening, opening, and using all senses
on a moment by moment basis is the route to making spontaneity a skill.

Effects of Pretence on Acting Skills

Conditions can diminish or enhance the exercise of any skill. Particular
conditions have a remarkable effect on acting skills. For example, a seeming
incapacity to perceive a character can be strongly affected by the news that
you are to play that role. In other words preperformance skills are mobilized
when actors are required in their own person to represent a particular
character. There is a similar releasing effect of performance skills. Ways of
speaking, of behaving-actions literally impossible to do in their own
108 Don Mixon
person-can be done on stage in the guise of a fictional character. Lets
pretend has a powerfully freeing effect on behaviour, whether the behav-
iour of children at play or actors in rehearsal and performance. Thus in
important ways some acting skills can be exercised fully only in pretend
situations.
Having recognized the freeing effect of pretence, it is necessary to state its
limits. What is chiefly influenced is the capacity to attempt something.
Actors become willing to try things unthinkable in their own incarnation.
Trying something doesnt mean it will be done well or skillfully. But attemp-
ting is a necessary first step in the development of skill. The release provided
by pretence serves to mobilize whatever skill is there and to serve the further
development of the skill.
The freeing effect of pretence is a clue to understanding the limits charac-
ter places on action. T o a stage actor, just as to anyone else, certain things,
certain actions are unthinkable and undoable in their own person or charac-
ter. One literally must become someone else, must remake oneself, in order
to be able to do them. ( I suspect that becoming someone else is the implicit
project of most psychotherapies-including behavioural ones).

The Audience
One further stipulation needs to be added to the requirement for the ideal
type: That the Actor be able to be true to any conceivable character,
making all actions believable and spontaneous, before any conceivable audience.
Performance conventions vary (Burns, 1972) and audiences differ and
change. Some audiences are far more critical and difficult to move than
others-whether we are speaking of theatre or of social life. It is not uncom-
mon to find stage devotees who idolize their stars yet have never seen a
first rate performance. Voters elect to highest office blatant liars who should
be unable to deceive a three year old-and continue to believe in the
leaders honesty and sincerity in spite of both physical evidence and what
should be an utterly unconvincing performance. Users of the theatre analogy
leave out an essential qualifier if the audience is absent from their account.

USING T H E IDEAL-TYPICAL ACTOR

And all the men and women merely players. The ideal-typical Actor is
not a mere player but an actor with unlimited powers. The Actor in the
theatre analogy functions as a measure in relation to which are placed the
mere players we wish to understand. The Actors unlimited powers serve to
throw into relief the always limited skills of mere players who attempt to
 A Theoheory of Actors 109
present themselves, manage impressions, monitor and direct their behaviour.
By using the Actor as measure limits on and possibilities for action can be
shown. Interest can be either specific or general. Specific in the sense of
interest in discovering the limits on action for a particular sort of character
in a particular sort of situation. General in the sense of wishing to know what
sorts of acting skills are needed in order to be able to reliably produce
actions of interest. An account of the limits on action thus focusses both on
limits at a given moment and encourages inquiry into how habits can be
loosened and the future range of action increased. Looking at and evaluating
methods of training actors is a beginning.
That human beings, compared to other animals, are born remarkably
flexible and unformed has become a behavioural truism. But our flexible first
nature very early begins to be restrained, for most parents and societies do
not want children who can behave in any way they please. Infants and
children are pushed by their social experience into more and more inflexible
ways of behaving or habits. Such habits become our second nature and
appear to be a human analog to animal instincts. Habits become our behav-
ioural skills or means. At their most inflexible, habits move people like
instincts move animals, to behave much as mechanisms in the Machine
model. The Actors skills represent an adult return to our first nature and its
ideal-typical form-pure possibility. Inflexible habit represents a denial of
possibility. The ideal-typical Actor and the ideal-typical Machine stand a t
the two ends of a behavioural spectrum. The actions and behaviour of
people fall somewhere between.
If we are trained, pushed, and pulled into inflexible habits it is not with-
out protest. Character armour weighs heavily. We remember and long for
some of the freedom and flexibility of childhood. More and more of social
psychology, sociology, and psychology recognizes and studies the social
construction of reality. The realities we construct, whether in the form of
social institutions or bodies and voices, are not only less than ideal, they are
less than satisfactory. Theatre people from sometime in the dimly remem-
bered past have socially constructed stage realities. The hope of the theatre
analogy is that comparison of one construction with the other will bring
better understanding of the construction process and thus of social realities.
For this to happen the stage constructions need to be better understood. It is
my hope that the ideal-typical Actor can contribute to that understanding.

Don Mixon
Department of Psychology
University of Wollongong.
P.O. Box II44
Wollongong, X.S.W . 2500
Australia
110 Don Mixon
NOTES
I am indebted to Bronwyn Davies, Darien Hampton, E. Mix, and Bill Noble for
critically helpful comments on a version of the manuscript.

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