by Jason Bennett, revised 2007

Are you in touch with the part of you that could really kill someone? How about the part of you that is a passionate lover, a stoic thinker, a nurturer or a helpless, vulnerable child? These are all examples of archetypes — universal, fundamental "ways of being" or "ways of seeing" the world that are hard-wired into your brain. Accessing these kinds of archetypes is key to great acting.

Actors must have access to all kinds of archetypes instantly, without any conscious effort. Most actors must learn the ability to do this through dedication and hard work, because we've been taught to repress certain impulses (archetypes) most of our lives. Bad acting is often the result of actors repressing archetypes without realizing it. The more archetypes you have access to, the more roles you can be hired to play.

Your mind contains dozens of extremely diverse archetypes so you can adapt rapidly to changing circumstances in life, virtually becoming a "different person" (accessing different archetypes) in different situations. Think about how differently you feel and act when you are on a first date than when you are speaking with your mother. You are behaving/acting from very different archetypes without even realizing it.

Archetypes are stored in your brain as images and fantasies. They are the psychological "programs" that, in part, cause human behavior.

Archetypes have totally different ways of expressing themselves, ways of moving, speaking, feeling and thinking. They literally are multiple personalities in your psyche. This is the way the human psyche is structured. Actors must move effortlessly from archetype to archetype, with no conscious effort.

More examples of archetypes within us all are The Masculine, The Feminine, The Killer, The Hero, The Victim, The Pleaser, The Joker, The Traditionalist, The Liar, The Business Person, The Romantic, The Slut, The Old Soul, The Spiritualist, The Magical Child, The Playful Child, The Vulnerable Child, and more. Even when you completely repress a particular archetype, it is still alive in your unconscious. You simply aren't showing it to the world and your conscious mind may have even forgotten it.

Once you think about it, it becomes obvious your personality (character) is made up of many archetypes that are separate from one another in your brain. For example, the archetype in you that makes love tenderly doesn't move or make the same kinds of sounds as the archetype in you that could murder someone. It feels totally different to you on the inside and looks and feels totally different to others seeing you from the outside. Clearly, when you are in a killer archetype, you are going to give off a very different energy, move a very different way, and think very differently from when you are in an archetype that makes love.

Imagine if the impulse to kill came from the same part of your brain that love-making impulses come from. Our species wouldn't last too long. Learning how to access and mix the huge world of amazing archetypes in you is key to developing unique characterizations in your acting. You really can learn to reclaim the parts of you (archetypes) you've been taught to repress. It's fun, very intense, and can radically change your acting.

If you go to an audition and you are cut off from the archetypes called for in the script, you will not be hired to play that role. Intellectual script analysis and an intellectual analysis of the character's objectives and obstacles will not work for you. You will not truly empathize with the character, because empathy only occurs when you connect to the parts of you (the archetypes) that are written into the character.

If you repress the archetypes that make up a character, your performance will be predictable and stereotypical. What often happens in this kind of situation is that your "director/rational mind" archetype takes over your acting and "indicates" the behaving it thinks the character is supposed to do. This looks "fake" to an audience.

Let's say you deeply repress the archetype in you that is completely vulnerable, that feels hopelessness and deep emptiness (everyone has this inside of them, whether they know about it or not). You will not be able to adopt the point of view of a character that is vulnerable or experiences this kind of vulnerability in the story. You will not feel like you "understand" or "get" the character or why they do what they do. You may not have much of an impulse at all for how to begin working on the role. You may even feel judgmental toward the character.

From the outside, others may tell you that the character just "isn't you" or that it isn't your "type." Some acting teachers may say things like you aren't "letting the circumstances affect you" or that your "choices aren't strong enough" or that you are not really going after your objectives, or you have "to be willing" to go there, or some other kind of criticism. You will have a hard time identifying the character's objectives and actions. Often in these kinds of situations, the problems can be traced back to repressed archetypes.

The great news for modern acting teachers and their students is that there is an antidote for these kinds of problems that goes way beyond traditional script analysis and improvisation. For the last 20 years, modern acting teachers working with psychologists have innovated extremely effective, safe, efficient ways of helping actors to reconnect to parts of themselves they have repressed in order to help their acting. The last generation of acting teachers was often unable to help actors with these kinds of archetypal blocks. Because they did not have the psychological knowledge we have today, these teachers sometimes labeled talented (but blocked) actors untalented.

But a modern understanding of psychology gives rise to Archetype Work for Actors. This modern psychological tool yields tremendous growth, but it definitely is not therapy. In an Archetype Facilitation, you first learn about the archetypes you can easily access. These are the archetypes that "feel" most like who you are. Over time, as you develop the ability to work with these unrepressed archetypes, you will learn through a gentle exploration why you have repressed other kinds of archetypes.

Everyone represses many archetypes as they grow up; it's a normal part of personality development. But as an actor, you need the ability to experience the world from all kinds of archetypes, based on the obligations of the material. You cannot be a successful actor without access to a huge range of archetypes many non-actors go through their lives repressing.

Archetype Work does not change who you are, nor does it screw with your personality. It simply and powerfully develops your awareness of and ability to choose to access real parts of you for use in your acting. Perhaps you want to play a character that has killer, pleaser, nurturer, seducer and obsessive traits (archetypes). Or perhaps you want to play a character that is a passionate guru, deeply insecure, primarily sexually abstinent, but who eventually turns into a murderous, rapist who hates religion.

No matter what the story is, all characters can be defined from the point of view of mixing and matching archetypes. And all conflict in drama can be seen as wars between competing archetypal world views. The more archetypes you have access to in your work, the more amazing your acting and characterizations will seem. Conversely, the fewer archetypes you have access to, the fewer colors will be in your acting and the fewer characters you will be hired to play.

I am not suggesting that actors should be thinking about archetypes while they are actually performing. Of course not. The work we advocate is almost entirely work that is done in preparation to act — in actor training. By the time you are in an audition or cast in a role, you better have effortless access to a whole range of archetypes with no conscious effort. It must be automatic at that point. It is not a process you should be obsessing about while you act.

A professional actor must have access to at least the following kinds of basic archetypal energies to have a chance at a successful career: Killer energy, Vulnerability, Pleaser energy, Doing, Being, Personal, Impersonal, Rationality, Sexuality, Sensuality, Spirituality, Chaos, Order, Control, Release, Special, Ordinary, Deep, Shallow. Each of these archetypes has their own way of moving, sounding, feeling and seeing the world. They are very, very different from one another — most of them complete opposites from one another.

There are dozens more archetypes that are written into characters; this is simply a list of the archetypal realms either missing or over-present in the actors I've been working with lately. Characters are in part unique combinations of universal archetypes. With the integration of this modern approach into actor training, actors are realizing much faster and more efficient progress in their work.

Archetype Work is easy to understand and always works for actors because it is based on the reality of how your brain works. Ultimately, acting is about telling stories. Ultimately acting isn't all about you and how you feel, but about your service to the ideas and world of the story. It is about playing actions and pursuing objectives. The key here is that unique combinations of archetypes pursue objectives and play actions completely differently from one another. And if you don't have automatic access to a whole range of archetypes, the performance becomes all about you because you will be struggling the whole time to "get" what is going on.

In the Archetype Work, we say you "go into yourself to ultimately get out of yourself." Freeing your psyche in this way allows you total immersion in the world of the play -- free to play with the other actors and to connect to a live audience. A repressed psyche leads to a self-obsessed actor.

Archetype Work can be plugged into any traditional approach to acting with amazing results. This article is just a basic introduction to Archetype Work for Actors. Reading about it can't compare to actually experiencing your archetypes in a "pure" way in an archetype session. It's not a concept, it's an experience you must have to "get" the power of this work. I hope to see you in class soon.