anandnk wrote:
Stage performances are judged to be realistic to the degree that actors reproduce on stage the behaviors generally associated by audiences with the emotional states of the characters portrayed. Traditional actors imitate those behaviors, whereas Method actors, through recollection of personal experience, actually experience the same emotions that their characters are meant to be experiencing. Audiences will therefore judge the performances of Method actors to be more realistic than the performances of traditional actors.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
Argument - Judging a stage performance to be realistic - when there is a similarity between the emotions experienced by the audience and the emotion portrayed by the actors.
Traditional actor - imitate the emotion , Method actor - experience the emotion on stage
Conclusion - Audience will judge method actor's emotion to be more realistic.
Probable assumption - Method actor will be able to produce the same emotion that the audience experience while viewing the scene
(A) Performances based on an actors own experience of emotional states are more likely to affect an audience's emotions than are performances based on imitations of the behaviors generally associated with those emotional states.
- The culprit is "Affect"
- The argument does not mention the "affect" - whether the affect is positive or negative.
- May be the affect is more on a negative side, alienating the audience from the method actor's performance
- Close but Incorrect
(B) The behavior that results when a Method actor tells a certain emotion will conform to the behavior that is generally associated by audiences with that emotion.
- The argument states that audience will judge a performance realistic when their emotion are reproduced by the actors on stage. This argument was missing in the original passage.
- Correct
(C) Realism is an essential criterion for evaluating the performances of both traditional actors and Method actors.
- Negate: Realism is not an essential criterion for evaluation.
- First issue - Evaluation by whom? - Critics / audience = Do not know
- Even if it is not an essential criterion what matters is if they can match those emotions with those of the audience.
- Wrong
(D) Traditional actors do not aim to produce performances that are realistic representations of a characters emotional states.
- Their aim is irrelevant.
- Wrong
(E) In order to portray a character, a Method actor need not have had experiences identical to those of the character portrayed.
- This discusses the ability of method actor to portray a character. The argument focuses on the matching of emotional states of actors and audience.
- Irrelevant to some extent.