Houston's Talented Thespian: THOMAS MILES

Acting, the performing art in which movement, gesture, and intonation are used to realize a fictional character for the stage, motion pictures, or television.

According to an article published in britannnica.com/art/acting, acting is generally agreed to be a matter less of mimicry, exhibitionism, or imitation than the ability to react to imaginary stimuli. Its essential elements remain the twin requisites enunciated by the French actor François-Joseph Talma in his tribute to the actor Lekain (1825): “an extreme sensibility and a profound intelligence.” For Talma, it is the sensibility that allows the actor to mark his face with the character’s emotions being played and convey the playwright’s intentions, the implications of the text, and the movements of the “soul” of the character. Intelligence— the understanding of the workings of the human personality—is the faculty that orders these impressions for an audience.

The essential problems in acting—those of whether the actor actually “feels” or merely imitates, of whether he should speak naturally or rhetorically, and of what constitutes being natural—are as old as theatre itself.

The untimeliest beginnings of drama originate in Athens, where ancient hymns, called dithyrambs, were sung in honor of the god Dionysus. These hymns were subsequently revised for harmonic demonstrations in which contributors would dress up in costumes and masks.

Thomas “Nephew Tommy” Miles is a very talented enter-tainer out of Houston, Texas. We had the unique opportunity to document his story further as he builds his legacy.