ACTING AND PERSONALITY-CHANGE - THE MEASUREMENT OF CHANGE IN SELF-PERCEIVED PERSONALITY-CHARACTERISTICS DURING THE ACTORS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Fourteen student actors who were involved in a dramatic production com pleted the Adjective Check List (ACL) at four points in time: prior to the beginning of the play's rehearsal period, in the middle of the re hearsal period, during the performance period, and 1 month after the p roduction was over. The personality profiles yielded by the 22 ACL sca le scores were compared with the profiles for each actor's fictional d ramatic character. It was hypothesized that (1) the actor chosen to pl ay a given character would have personality characteristics similar to that of his or her corresponding character, and (2) the actor's self- perceived personality profile would become more similar to the charact er's during the rehearsal and production period. Support emerged for t he second hypothesis, but not for the first. Observations regarding th ese findings and suggestions for future explorations are given. (C) 19 94 Academic Press, Inc.