Cavorting Through Teleportation
Is it possible for an actor to portray the exact same character every night of a show? I had a discussion with a fellow actor about this and the conclusion we arrived at is: no – absolutely not.
Every character we put on invariably contains some element of our own self and, of course, we are never the same person each day. You could be filled to the brim with elation today after getting the phone number of that person you have been eyeing at the coffee shop for the past few weeks, which would feel radically different from a sombre night yesterday when you saw a stray cat sighing its last breath beside a dumpster in a flickering alley. The emotions an actor carries throughout the day would ultimately influence the character one way or another. But despite this inescapable truth, many actors keep falling into the trap of worrying whether their character portrayals are flawed from their own changing emotions.
It reminds me of an article I read the other day about quantum entanglement and its possible application to making teleportation a reality. The theory basically states that all particles share an invisible link with a counterpart particle that remains stable even at great distances. This link between these two particles causes them to become “entangled”, which would allow us to almost immediately know the information of the other particle upon discovering the information of one particle. If we can somehow “piggy-back” on this mysterious link, we can essentially have our atoms bond with the particles of “Point A” and have them instantaneously copied over on the counterpart particles at “Point B”.
Like any self-respecting sci-fi geek out there, I was jumping up and down excitedly at the possibility of teleportation. At the end of the article, however, it posed a problem: in order for teleportation to work according to the quantum theory, your original self would have to be destroyed at “Point A” first so that your copy can appear in “Point B”. But that would mean that, technically, you never arrive at “Point B” – only your copy does. It should theoretically have the same body and same memories as your original, but when you boil it down to the bare-bone facts, it is really only a copy of you. A whole moral debate sprung up after the article with one side saying the teleportee would never know the difference and the other side saying that the teleportee would not be the same.
My take on the discussion is: “What does it matter?” If we have already established the fact that we change with each passing day and that each change stems from the choices we make, why get so hung up on whether teleportation alters us or not? When it comes down to it, the use of teleportation is really just one of the million choices we make every day.
The same goes for actors fretting about the shift of their character from the other night. Just embrace the change and use the energy from it to fuel your performance. Only then can you pull away from the “glorious final character” you envisioned in your mind and focus on the process of creating that character. After all, that is why most of us fell in love with acting in the first place: to experience the journey from self to character.
Teleportation - this is how you travel with style
(Artwork courtesy of: WeAreSurvivalMachines.com)
Nice post, Winluck.