by
Anonymous
Here’s where the real fun happens: when you figure out how to create a character who is distinct from you and, simultaneously, the same as you. Someone who is alive in your skin, but still free to behave in whatever atrocious or saintly ways that befit the story. You can bite down hard on such a performance, fully participating in a freely flowing, non-fragmented onstage life.
While it might seem like mysterious journey, getting to this paradoxical state, there’s actually a kind of science to it. Which is not to say that strong actors arrive at their characters the same way each time, like machines. But a certain underlying phenomenon almost always supports the work -- whether or not the actor is conscious of the process. If you understand the way this phenomenon works, you can develop powerful tools to help you when you get stuck.
First of all, as you probably already know, it’s crucial that your body assimilate what it’s being asked to do. Your nervous system, your muscular system, your breathing patterns, all have to flow naturally. They have to actually be alive. If you can’t release yourself as a free-flowing organism on stage, your performance will never take off. So it’s crucial that your body own the behavior being asked of it.
The trick is understanding that the origin of that behavior is pretty much inconsequential.
Many actors know how to be themselves on stage (or on camera). Many have nice, natural performances, but find it difficult to move away from their personal patterns of politeness, decorum, etc. So if they are asked to “sink the knife in,” they either resort to cliched ideas of wickedness (i.e., bad acting), or they undermine the story with their inability to push past their own niceness.
The solution is one of the most creative aspects of serious acting. It’s where the craft becomes an art form.
Think of all your behaviors in life as your personal palette of colors. Since they are your behaviors, your body has already assimilated them. But to use them effectively (in the service of a story) you must ask your mind to release them from their ethical underpinnings.
For example, if you talk with your five-year-old niece in a particularly childlike way, you do so in order to manifest your personal ethics. You want her to feel safe, understood, important, etc. So you get down on her level, open your eyes wide, and speak with exaggerated excitement and warmth. Now, it takes a bit of courage to borrow that behavior and apply it to other purposes, but this is what good actors do all the time.
The first step involves substitution. Let’s say you’re playing a sadistic boss firing an employee. Imagine, as you explore the scene, that you are talking to your niece instead of the employee. Your behavior turns childlike – not because you’re putting on childlike behavior, but because you are committing to specific goals and actions (literally trying to make the other person feel safe, understood, etc.). At the same time, though, your character is speaking these incongruous words: “You’re fired and I hope you rot in hell.” An interesting combination of intention and physical action. When you find the right mix of behaviors from your palette, you’ll discover that you’re starting to create something rather special. You’ll sense the potential for a powerful, alive interpretation that is unique to you.
One step more, though, is required before performance.
After you’ve chosen appropriate behavior, you will need to redefine the actions that propel it. In other words, if you’re a sadistic boss, you don’t really care about your employee feeling safe. As an actor, you made the discovery that over-communicating (as if to a child) your “care” for your employee’s feelings can come across as, perhaps, wonderfully sadistic (from the audience’s point of view). Even though you, the actor, are quite compassionate by nature, you have found an authentic, personal way to bite down on some very cruel behavior. Remember, because the behavior is already authentic to you, your organism can already flow with it, even after it’s divorced from its ethical underpinnings. But don’t go into a performance trying to pretend you’re talking to your five-year-old niece! Once your body believes in what it’s doing, you can redefine your actions from your character’s point of view. So, for example, he might be using sarcasm as a way to punish the employee for making his life as a boss so miserable. But instead of using generic sarcasm, you are exploiting – out of context – behavior that is quite true to you, and, so, cuts marvelously sharp and deep.
With a little imagination (as you mine the different aspects of yourself) and self-permission (to exploit these aspects out of context) you can create magic.
