ABSTRACT. A great many debates on the paradoxical relation between the real emotions of the actors and the emotions the character is supposed to express have graced the day. Diderot’s paradox was the starting point of a dispute between scholars and actors; writers and theoreticians have been discussing ever since whether the outside-in techniques or the inside-out ones are more efficient. The outside-in techniques attempt to imitate the external appearance of the emotion; nevertheless, the actors are not supposed to actually feel the emotions they display. The inside-out techniques focus on generating emotions from within. Our qualitative research explores, in the Romanian cultural context, the actors’ world of emotional experience and tries to identify the distinct emotional problems as a function of the performance style, the role and the performance preparation moments, the experience after the performance and the experience of the role involvement type. For this study, we applied the Grounded Theory method and we accomplished a thorough analysis of the results which show that the Romanian actors use, equally so, both of these acting styles (the detached and the involved one) with their specific techniques. pp. 152– 156

Keywords: actor; performance; Diderot’s paradox; outside-in techniques; inside-out techniques; involved style; detached style