Acting is ephemeral, difficult to nail down, different for every actor, and often different for the same actor from role to role. But there are techniques that can resolve problems, and lead you to creative solutions. By technique, I mean anything that helps you fulfill the art of acting. In the simplest sense, technique is all that you do to create a work of art. If an actor runs around the block before a scene to help trigger an emotion, that’s technique. If a painter ritualistically rearranges his studio before each session, that’s technique. If a writer uses the sense memory of childhood aromas to launch into a new chapter, that’s technique. If a director takes responsible control of his life so that creative time can be better managed, that’s technique. From the smallest, seemingly insignificant action you do while rehearsing, to the most complicated exercise or character study, all is technique.
In all work on technique, I believe there are two components: Work on a Role, and Work on Oneself. For an actor, these two are completely entwined: work on oneself, which can include work on body, voice, and exercises or improvisations to open up emotionally. Then work on a role, the specifics of that character in the story, which can affect work on oneself and vice versa. Many an actor has learned a lot about himself and life through the work on a specific role, and I might add that, whether they know it or not, this is part of the reason they are drawn to acting as a profession. The actor is both the creator and the created. In other performing arts such as music, the artist plays an instrument, but the actor is both the player and the instrument. Under pressure of the immediacy of a performance, the actor has nothing else but himself.
Art has to do with the delivery of a strong communication. This communication for an actor goes first to his partner, and then to the audience. This impact on the acting partner and then the audience is more important than getting caught up in some special, elitist technique. Communication first, technique second. Use technique, don’t let it use you. Technique is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
What follows here is referred to by the students in class as “The Checklist.” It has evolved over my years of teaching as a series of tools any actor can use to help approach their work on a scene. A very successful actress who has been a student of mine for a long time insists she uses this checklist on every gig she gets. It is not strictly necessary to dwell upon the entire checklist every time you work—any one of the tools may be the one that unlocks a scene for you.
1.The Event
2.Evaluation
3.Behavior
4.Physical/Emotional State
5.What Happened Before the Scene?
6.Creative Hiding
7.Be a Person
8.Inner and Outer Life: The “Cover”
9.Who’s the Author?
10.Improvisation
11.Humor
12.Trust
13.Being Personal
14.Pathology
15.Objectives
16.Specifics
17.Use of Objects
18.Arbitrary Choices
19.Moment to Moment, Part 1: Belief
20.Moment to Moment, Part 2: Alternatives
1. THE EVENT
By “event” I mean what is happening in a scene. What is taking place? My favorite question when directing: “What’s going on?” Is it a wedding, as in the opening of The Godfather? The wedding is the main event, the primary reason the family has gathered. The other strong event is the people approaching the Godfather to congratulate him or, more importantly, to ask him for favors.
When you understand the event—what is going on here?—you can then connect that answer to your own life, the experiences that you may have had that relate in some way to the event in this story, and so in that way understand the story better.
In thinking about the event, don’t tie yourself in knots. It’s not academic. You needn’t write an essay. Just try to answer the simple question, “What’s going on?” Many times I ask this question and immediately can sense the actor going astray: “Well, it’s a piece about redemption.” Wrong. It may very well be a piece about redemption, but what’s going on? It might take a few times of my asking to get to something like, “I’m packing my stuff to move out on this relationship.” Oh! Now that I can play. I understand that. That’s an event. Everyone has had a breakup scene or two in their life. So ask yourself: What did I do? How did I behave? How did I respond? An understanding of the event and relating it to something personal from your life, a behavior or emotion you can draw upon, should set you on a course of acting that is specific, real and personal.
You must look carefully and study the facts of a scene in order to determine the actual event. Sometimes in acting, as in life, there is an apparent event and then an actual event. In the rape scene in A Streetcar Named Desire, the apparent event is Stanley coming home to celebrate the birth of his child, but the actual event is Stanley’s seduction of Blanche, eventually raping her. Some other examples:
Apparent event: A funeral of a loved one, with appropriate black clothes and weeping around the casket. Actual event: Everyone is wondering who will get the money? Who’s in the will? Who’s crying the most to show they deserve the inheritance the most?
Apparent event: In class, an actor volunteers to help a beautiful actress with her career administration or her scene work, full of creative ideas to improve her journey in class. Actual event: The actor, fancying the actress, wants to do anything to ingratiate himself—the actual event is fueled by romantic desire.
Apparent event: An uncle tries very hard to support his niece, and guide her in her romantic experience with a boy to whom she’s attracted. Actual event: The uncle has his own attraction to her, against the morals of society, and is secretly trying to break up the young couple for his own purposes. (This particular example is of course from Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge.)
In the play, The Girl on the Via Flaminia, an American soldier is fixed up with a young Italian girl who he brings to live with him as his mistress. They meet for the first time in a room of an Italian pensione. The event is clear, except for an important detail: the girl is a virgin. Her innocence adds a special circumstance to the event for both the actress and the actor playing the scene. This scene is played differently by both because she is a virgin. The event is different, her behavior is different, and the boy’s reactions toward her are different. It is not stated in the play that she is a virgin, but if you examine the story closely—what’s actually going on here? It seems to me an Italian family hiding their sixteen or seventeen-year-old daughter from the Germans, and now from the American GIs, would have protected her and not let her out of their sight. Now the war is over, she’s about twenty, and still a virgin. In this scene, an actor must look carefully to pull this important but unstated fact, which strongly affects the actual event.
Again, once the actors nail down the event, they can then look into their own personal experience to better understand the event, and how specifically to play it. They can say, “Oh, I remember the first time I had sex, what the scene was like, how nervous I was, how I behaved.” Because it was so long ago, some actors may have forgotten that at one time they actually were virgins. So check it out, it’ll come back to you! This connection of the events of a play or film to one’s own experience is vital. It makes the events personal to you—specific, real, and alive.
I recall doing a project once at the Actors’ Studio in New York. The scene was an Armistice celebration party at the end of World War I, a scene from Bud Schulberg’s The Disenchanted. Rather than a stilted stage party, we created a fluid, free-flowing, very lively party. The action continued while the principals, isolated by follow spotlights, carried on their dialogue, which was an innovative solution to a party scene on stage. The understanding and full use of the event—the exuberant party—freed us to discover this solution. The Disenchanted is about the F. Scott Fitzgeralds. One could say Zelda and Scott’s life together in the ’20s was a party. So here they are meeting for the first time, symbolically, at a violent, erotic, romantic party. We really nailed this event, the celebration of the end of World War I, which defined for the actors the wild life of their characters. This furious activity in our scene was carried out fully, enhancing the two lead actors’ specific participation in the event. They could flirt with other partygoers in the middle of the scene, or be dragged off into the fray by someone who wanted to dance. The actors playing Zelda and Scott were able to feel the presence of this mad crowd surrounding them as they danced in their midst, to feel the seductive energy of this volatile time, which was a foreshadowing of their chaotic life to come. The event is a very strong tool, helping you unlock the scene—so look carefully, get the truth of it, relate it to your own life, and remember the key question: What’s going on?
2. EVALUATION
Remember that old Johnny Carson setup: “How cold is it, Johnny?” His answer was always some hilarious riff, “It’s so cold that they turned the thermostats up in hell,” or some such line. That’s how I sometimes refer to the concept of evaluation. To evaluate is to appraise something, to rate it, to determine its intensity. The actor, having understood the event, should next evaluate the scene or moment. For example, how much does the junkie need dope? How determined is Hamlet to get revenge? How intent is Javier Bardem’s hit man in No Country For Old Men on finding Josh Brolin? Without an evaluation of the scene or moment, the actor is lost as to what specific choices to make, what to play, what to look for in his own experience. In order to know what to play in a scene, the actor must understand the degree to which the character is experiencing a particular emotion or behavior, so that the proper choice can be made to fulfill that judgment. How much does Juliet want to be with Romeo? It is important to spur your character’s life with a decision, with an evaluation. How badly is this breakup affecting me? I’m sick about it! Or, on the other side, How badly do I want out of this relationship? I can’t wait to be free!
When you take a trip in life, it is always smart to ask the temperature of the city you are going to visit; then you know what clothes to bring in order to be comfortable. The same in acting. This can be difficult at times for certain actors—to know the temperature of the scene, or to hit the proper level of evaluation. They’re playing a moment where they discover their spouse is cheating on them—they know it needs a higher, evaluated response, but they’re stuck somehow. No juice. They just can’t hit it. Often I’ll advise the actor in this case to “assume the position,” like when a cop says, “Get out of the car and assume the position.” We all know what it’s like when you get pulled over, and then if they ask you to get out of the car—whoa. You’re in danger and you better do as you’re told, right? Well in acting, when you have to achieve a certain evaluation, do as you’re told, as if the police officer ordered you. Assuming the position means you go directly to belief and experience without censoring or questioning—as a tool to spark your imagination, your involvement. The real emotions may be right there, just underneath. What you express when you assume the position is totally up to you—be free, really allow yourself to go. Don’t censor or be critical of whatever impulses you get. It’s a technique to free you from getting stuck in some moment in a scene.
An actor who has evaluated a scene or a moment properly is not necessarily yelling, slamming doors, and throwing things across the stage in some kind of manufactured rage. Remember a time you were so emotional that you couldn’t speak? I once got mugged in front of my apartment building, and as the guys took my money I was cool as a cucumber. No reaction. Seemingly no fear. Almost relaxed about it. I walked up to my apartment, looked down and realized I had slightly pissed in my pants out of fear. Or the time I was on a date with a girl, and the chemistry was so strong between us that as we sat down at a restaurant and looked over the entrees, the menus in our hands were quietly shaking.
Many people have had the experience of almost being in a car wreck—missing it by inches. They’re calm as they swerve to avoid crashing, and then five minutes later they can’t breathe and are shaking. So always look to see how your evaluation manifests itself in emotions, and most importantly in behavior. Look to your life to understand better what to do as an actor.
3. BEHAVIOR
What is the character doing physically in the scene? What is the character’s life, and how does the physical behavior affect that life? Is she writing a letter in the scene? Is she changing clothes? Is he cleaning up the room? People behave, they do things. One of my teachers stressed that you don’t come on stage to do a scene, you enter to do something in a room. Often actors stand around and wait for their cues. But what is happening in the scene physically? Find out and do it. Experiment with different physical activities, create a physical life until you find the right one. If you look for what the character is doing physically and play that, instead of coming on the stage to do the lines, you will find all kinds of exciting things to act.
I once directed a scene in class from Mary, Queen of Scots. The actors had been stuck for where to place the scene, and seemed at a loss for what to do during the scene. What could their behavior be? I got the idea of playing the scene in a stable, and I even built a horse out of a shopping cart, found objects, and some fabric. The actress washed down the horse, brushed it. The actor calmed and talked to the horse when it “moved.” That horse—built overnight with no money, wheels showing underneath the bottom of the fabric—gave the scene a life that wasn’t present before.
In a scene I directed from Klute, I had the Bree Daniels character take a shower in front of Klute—this lent a flirtation, a seductiveness to the actress playing the scene. Excite the detective, turn him on, so that then he would give her the tapes she wanted. So here we have event: the apparent event of flirtation, the actual event of her desperately wanting the tapes; evaluation—how badly does she want those tapes? Enough to seduce him? Absolutely. This leads to behavior: the choice of showering in front of him, which activates the emotional desperation of this character—a working call girl.
In Zeffirelli’s film production of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo’s problem in the balcony scene was physical: how to get up the vines, over the branches, and onto the balcony with Juliet. This physical life gave the scene humor, youth, and a touching humanity.
Here, for example, is how the great Russian director and teacher Stanislavski counsels his actors to create the chain of physical actions in the scene from Othello where Othello and Desdemona are together the morning after their nuptial night, before any shadow has crossed their love:
How should an actor live that scene? What line should he follow? Is it the line of love, of passion (that is, of feelings), the character line, the literary line, the storyline? No, it is the line of action, the line of truthful actions and of genuine confidence in them.
Here is the line of physical actions: (1) Try to find Desdemona and kiss her as quickly as possible; (2) She is enjoying herself and is coy with Othello; the actor must fall in with her playfulness and joke lightheartedly with her, (3) On the way, Othello has met Iago and, in a good mood, has jested with the latter, (4) Desdemona has come back to draw Othello over to the couch and he, again playful with her, follows her; (5) They lie down, remain that way; let your wife fondle you and, insofar as possible, respond in the same way. Thus, the actor lives through five of the simplest physical tasks.
In other words, the actor performs physical tasks by means of the simplest words and deeds, and follows these tasks to a full emotional involvement. If you follow the pattern of physical actions under the given circumstances and you believe in them, don’t worry, your acting is headed in the right direction.
In Stanislavski’s words again:
A few dozen tasks and physical acts, that’s how you have to master your part...that’s my advice to you in preparing a part.
“The job of the director is to turn psychology into behavior.” That’s Kazan. The actor seeks to understand or uncover for himself the psychology of the scene—what’s happening, what’s there, what’s going on in the deepest sense, then creates the behavior that he thinks will illuminate that. Brando in Streetcar: That dinner scene, the way Blanche and Stella are making fun of him and dismissing him as he eats, the psychology of how a man like Kowalski would respond to that, leading to behavior: his smashing the plates and saying the classic line, “My place is cleared, you want me to clear yours?” Or it could be something simple: reading, or getting ready for bed, or eating—living and behaving in the space, and thus finding a quiet truth to the moment. Remember the specifics of living and behaving: the particulars of going to bed, brushing one’s hair, putting on a robe, eating a cracker, taking off makeup, applying that new special face cream. The specific task should be of interest to the actor, so that she becomes absorbed in the task: the specifics of applying this special face cream, massaging certain areas of the face, the gentle dabbing of Kleenex, checking it all in the mirror. A fine actress could do wonders with just this one behavior.
So don’t go just by rote. Really involve yourself in the physical behavior, believe in it and participate. If she is eating, really eat. If he is cleaning a gun, really clean it. If you are involved and interested, the audience will be, too—they will be convinced of your reality. You will be more a person, more the character, and in a much better position to discover the truth of the moment. Actors stand around and talk the lines. People behave.
4. PHYSICAL / EMOTIONAL STATE
In what condition is the character? Drunk? Tired? Hungry? Hot? Cold? What effect does this physical state have on the character in the scene? In the movie, Dog Day Afternoon, the particular kind of exhaustion, restlessness, tension, and frayed nerves created by the actors added to the suspense of the film. It’s like staying up for many hours studying or working: you get tired, but you also become hypertense and nervous. This kind of correctly chosen tiredness can lead you to fresh discoveries in the scene. So again, evaluation plays a major part in the selection of the proper physical state. Drunkenness. But what kind of drunkenness? Is it just a buzz or is it falling down? Is it the drunkenness of Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas—violent, volatile, dangerously humorous? Is it the despairing pain, the drinking-to-forget, desperately-joking Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night? Is it the silly, farcical, loopy English actress in California Suite? One needs to select specifically what state, the degree of that state, and the characteristics of that state you will emphasize to suit the scene and the character.
In the rape scene in Streetcar, Stanley has what might be called a sexual drunk. The booze heightens his feeling for sex. This drunkenness affects the actor in every way: body, desire, freedom, sexual drive. Even the beer is popped from the bottle and squirted in the air like a sexual orgasm.
Sometimes the actor can easily decide the physical state of the character. Other times it must be explored in rehearsal, re-evaluated, changed, tried again until the appropriate state can be found. Take the drunkenness in the scene between two brothers in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night: The older brother is funny and pathetic at the start, but later, as a drinker is apt to do, he descends into despair and violence. It helps the actor enormously to create the specific physical state, and the particular behavior that comes from that state, and tie it into the scene. Heat, in a play like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not just heat, but a particular kind of heat that adds to the frustration and sexuality of the characters. If you have ever visited a humid, hot climate like the American South in summer or the Caribbean, you have felt the oppressive heat that makes even the most mundane daily task difficult. Even trying to put on your watch is annoying. The physical state strongly affects the behavior of a character, so when you choose, make it a real choice, an alive choice that will affect you specifically in the scene in a way that will involve you and illuminate the life of your character.
Pain is also a physical state. At the end of On the Waterfront, Brando is badly beaten up in a fight. He creates a full physical state of pain, dizziness, almost unable to stand. The drama becomes about whether he can walk to the dockworkers’ gate. If he does, his side wins. His struggle to walk through his physical state of pain becomes the action, theme, and resolution of the film. The director, influenced by the physical life of the actor, makes a subjective camera of the dizzy, spinning, off-balance vision of the hero. We see what Brando sees for a moment. This is a masterfully realized physical state influencing all departments of the production.
Are you doing a scene that takes place in a hot climate? Rehearse at least once in a sauna—sounds wild, I know, but try it and observe what happens to you, how you behave. Then bring that behavior and sensory awareness to the rehearsal hall. A scene at the beach? Go to the beach. Be aware of the sand, the heat, the sound of the ocean. Bring this to your rehearsal. In The Exorcist, William Friedkin ensured the set was cold enough that you could see the actors’ breath—the simple truth of the cold room helped the actors really believe in the power of the possessed girl to create that frigid environment.
Physical state is often closely linked to emotional state. Triggers in the immediate environment can spark memories and imagination that in turn affect you emotionally. Everyone knows the feeling when they hear a piece of music and think back to the romantic relationship they were in at the time—it can seem so present and real just from hearing the music. Or the aroma of perfume. Or seeing a certain photograph or painting, or the smell of certain flowers. There’s an endless stream of sensations that can flood your system from the life around you—and as an actor you can help yourself by placing that photograph, those flowers, that piece of music on the set as you work.
But if he needs further assistance, the actor can investigate his past and isolate specific “sense memory” experiences, using imagination and concentration alone to create a particular sensation: heat around the face, pain in the right side, a headache around the temples—or the emotions that then follow from these sensations. My own take on sense memory is that we all have it, it’s not a fancy idea. If that special music isn’t available for my scene, I can concentrate on imagining it, and so excite my feelings about it, hum the melody softly to myself to coax the emotional experience. Sense memory can be overworked, too heavily emphasized in the acting arsenal, with endless exercises that can introvert some actors, or make those who aren’t good at the exercise question their real acting talent. It becomes a kind of overdone game, too heavy on the going over and over the exercise to draw out a particular emotion, and if it’s not perceived as being done satisfactorily, repeating it more and more. Sometimes this repeating becomes a grind toward an abstract perfection of the exercise, and in my opinion, can lead to an indulgence that may not bring results in truly improving the creativity or fulfillment of the actor.
As a young director, I would sometimes hire actors from class who were terrific in all these exercises—but then when they actually dealt with the story, the life of the scene, they couldn’t cut it. Conversely, there are very fine actors who aren’t able to execute this memory exercise. So it’s a tool—some have an aptitude for it, and some don’t. What’s important is the imagination. I think for many actors, you just need to put your attention slightly on that memory, the music, the sensation, and the imagination can come alive. Maybe, as Juliet, you don’t feel quite connected to your Romeo.... Think of your own romantic music, invite it in, be affected by it to whatever degree, and then move on.
So I believe the actor should first study the source material: the actual senses. In your life, just be aware of how you respond to certain physical elements and stimuli. The sun on your face. The wonderful smell of new mown grass. The screeching sound of car tires from a sudden stop. A toothache. Take note of these sensations, but don’t dwell on it, don’t overwork it. As you act, just let the slight sensation from this memory propel yourself into belief, and excite your imagination. In this way, the sensation you get from sense memory acts as a springboard to your imagination and belief. Belief leads to involvement. Let the smallest sensation be the fertile seed for the full realization of a complete physical or emotional state.
5. WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE SCENE?
An actor sits offstage before his entrance, and one of his compatriots takes a bucket of water and douses him with it. Why? Because the writer said that it was raining outside, and by choosing to make that experience very real, the actor was propelled into the scene with a life. So find the means to create whatever specific experience you need before coming into the scene. And while hopefully you won’t need the bucket of water too often, your performance life must be continuous. Don’t walk in like an actor coming from offstage, but rather as a person coming from somewhere. The famous acting couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, were once in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull where they literally sat and ate a meal offstage in order to give themselves the reality of having just eaten dinner before entering.
In my production of Streamers, the actor Charles Durning was doing the last drunk scene in rehearsal when the idea occurred to him—that as he entered the scene, it was a continuation of the life he’d had prior to his entrance: walking down the road in a drunken stupor and telling the story of his day to a tree, a bush, a passing dog. When he entered the stage, he just kept his distracted conversation going and didn’t relate to the other men in the barracks. This heightened the experience very much, giving his character a lost and disconnected quality. And when I directed Joan Hackett in Call Me By My Rightful Name, I had her rehearse a specific entrance—she was coming inside from the frigid cold of Riverside Drive in winter. I lived on Riverside Drive—so I knew only too well what that brutal, wind-driven cold was like. According to what the stage manager told me afterwards, I had her do the entrance 32 times in one rehearsal, relentlessly (and hopefully with charm) trying to find that bitter-ass cold I knew well. The behavior I wanted was that this specific cold made her snuggle seductively in the big coat we gave her, and she could look properly delicious to Robert Duvall, who was surprised and bowled over by her arrival in the room.
But an actor trying to particularize the moment before the scene need not be tied just to a physical state. Sometimes your character might be arriving from a devastating emotional event, such as being fired from a job, a severe fight or breakup with a loved one, the death of a friend or family member. There’s a specificity to creating that emotional state, believing in it, being involved with it, and allowing it really to affect the actor, so they can in turn bring that life to the scene. If you fully nail the moment before, every nuance of the scene you now play will be affected because of this preparation.
Whether wet from the rain, dazed by an accident, angry from a previous argument, or grieving a loss, the actor must deal in detail and specifics so the performance will be affected by the life the actor brings on stage with him. That way, your life on stage or before the camera will have a sense of continuing behavior rather than the artificial sense of just coming on to play the scene.
6. CREATIVE HIDING
In a hospital, a doctor approaches the father of a young child.
DOCTOR: Sir, your daughter ....
FATHER (As he looks away, down at his shoes, unable to face the news, moving a scrap of paper with his foot): Is she going to be okay?
DOCTOR: For sure. She’s going to be just fine.
Or, a different scene: You’re driving through a rural community, and you need directions. You pull to the side of the road where there is a man with a beard, wearing overalls, whittling a piece of wood in his hands.
YOU: Excuse me, do you know where there’s a bed & breakfast?
MAN (Continuing to whittle, he doesn’t even look up at you): You gotta go down that road there and make a left at the fork. (He barely moves his head in the direction of the road.)
Many characters that we play do not have the ability or the inclination at a given moment to confront another character directly. They feel too angry, tearful, sensual, wrought up. Or perhaps they’re the kind of person who doesn’t confront directly, tends to hide, never looks a person in the eye. An actor can sometimes find the truth of the moment by dealing with something else in the scene rather than confronting the other character. This technique can help in two ways: 1) by covering the emotion, hiding it—as people often do in life—you then behave more like a real person, and 2) by playing away from your partner—as the father did by looking at his feet, or as the man did carving that wood—you create behavior, which is the major thrust of the actor’s work.
Creative hiding during moments of high emotion can allow the actor to release and express feelings more deeply, because by hiding they deflect those feelings, as people do. This activity becomes a kind of mask that reveals more than it conceals. The boss has to tell you about a tragic phone message concerning a member of your family, and in telling you about it, he can’t look at you, but continues to fiddle with the paperweight on his desk. In playing the boss in this scene, you would find yourself more expressive, more fully emotional, by dealing with the paperweight rather than openly addressing the victim of the terrible news. Creative hiding is a human instinct to protect, to hide one’s feelings during duress. By using this technique, tapping into this wellspring of human behavior, the actor connects with a truthful part of life.
I had a very emotional scene once in a room with someone. It was difficult for me to face that person with the intense grief I was experiencing, so as the tears rolled down my cheeks I looked out the window, not allowing her to see my face. I “played” the carpet, the plants in the room, the view outdoors, the trees, the grass, the cars on the street. As I played off of those things, more of my feelings came out, because I protected myself from her gaze. The audience understands this kind of behavior because they have experienced it, even if they don’t label it creative hiding. So use this technique in your rehearsals—particularly if you have a scene with high emotionality, or with a character who you have determined tends not to confront the people he’s dealing with so head-on. Don’t play everything to your partner. Find ways to use creative hiding, and see what this does to your acting.
7. BE A PERSON
Each character you play is a person—simple to say, yes, but the creation of a real person is difficult. You’re trying to be a person, not an actor. But many actors miss the fact that they themselves are people—they don’t use the valuable resources of their own sensations, their own experience, their own behavior. They don’t observe the behavior of friends and family they’ve known their whole lives, the behavior of people they see around them every day. So they approach their work from an attitude of trying to “figure out” acting and make hot “acting” choices. But remember the main thrust is to be a person. In the scene, what would a person do?
Look at the six-o’clock news some time. A disaster hits some neighborhood or small town, and the reporter sticks a microphone in the face of a man who just lost his home—what does this man do? Often you will see no emotion whatsoever. He will speak very calmly about the tornado that just destroyed his life. There’s a hint of emotion in his voice. He speaks very clearly and calmly. Suddenly he stops in the middle of a word, unable to continue. An actor, given this script, might automatically look for the chance to jump with his emotions, break down in sobs because that seems the obvious choice for someone who just lost his home. But a person often will have totally different reactions from those of an actor. A person often tries not to cry—an actor too often cries.
Actors sometimes jump at the chance to play a huge response to some big news. One character says to another, “You just won a million dollars!” And the actor immediately jumps up and down and yells about winning a million dollars. But what would a person do? Stanislavski spoke of reflective delay. There is often a delay as a person processes information—whether it’s very good or very bad. Think back to a time in your life when some big news was delivered. What did you do? Did you immediately jump up and down, scream with joy or pain? Did you leap to an emotional response? Or did you just sit down for a moment, saying nothing? Did you question the information, or even insist that it wasn’t true? How long did it take to really understand that you won that award before you responded? That a loved one died? That you got into the college of your choice?
Be a person. Don’t just go for the emotion or the obvious response. Think about the behavior of people interviewed on the six-o’clock news. Reflective delay. Check out your life and remember what you did specifically in a particular circumstance—observe how a person responds and let that always be your guide.
8. INNER AND OUTER LIFE: THE “COVER”
“...A woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth, and this is the truth: I haven’t cheated my sister or you or anyone else as long as I have lived.”
In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois is terrified, anxious, holding a lot of grief inside. These feelings surface many times, yet on the outside she plays the coquettish Southern Belle, all sweetness and light. As the actress understands the inner and outer life, she is able to play beautifully between the two, allowing the inside to affect the outside, and back again. This leads her to feel compassion and understanding for the fully realized Blanche, and to render a more moving portrayal. The understanding and acting out of the inner and outer life, and how one affects the other, will lead you to the truth of what’s actually going on with a character. This bounce, if you will, between inner and outer life, is what takes place with a real person.
Work on inner and outer life is linked tightly with “subtext,” which is a very important concept in acting—here’s my own definition:
subtext, n., a stream of consciousness flowing often beneath the character’s awareness, but always having a strong effect on what he or she wants, feels and does.
The actor has to discover this subtext, nail it, and then connect with this somewhat buried or hidden thought and emotion, use it to propel the character’s life. Subtext is the underlying truth of what a character is thinking or doing, the inner life.
People often “cover” their feelings, their inner life, with a very contrary outer life. Knowing this well, actors will many times tell me how they wanted to “play the cover”—meaning their outer life was calm but they intended the inner life to be rich with emotion or anger or romantic desire. Too often, however, they’ve put a cover on nothing—akin to putting a lid on a pot of water, but forgetting to turn on the burner. You cannot “play the cover” of a placid exterior without understanding and investigating the inner emotions that are being covered. My solution to this common problem is ensure the actor’s chosen inner life really exists—bring it out and play the inner life during rehearsal in a very overt way. Make the inner life alive and on fire. Then cover it. This generally brings more depth to the character’s life.
When Brando in Sayonara enters the scene where he expects to find the bodies of his two dear friends, his face is a stoic, protective mask, holding back the strong emotions and anxiety that he feels inside. These two feelings, coexisting in conflict, in tension—feeling a great deal, but trying to hold on to himself—give this moment its truth and full theatrical expression. At the end of Sense and Sensibility, when Hugh Grant’s character arrives to say he is finally available to Emma Thompson’s—she broke into convulsive sobs of joy and relief, a terrific example of an actress using inner and outer life: that inner life of passion and desire finally overtaking the very serene, 19th century proper English social outer life.
People’s lives are sometimes so painful, they need a social mask or humor to endure. As actors, you need to understand both sides fully, and play the beautiful game that exists between the two, inner and outer life, as they evolve through the story.
9. WHO’S THE AUTHOR?
I once directed a comedy on Broadway where there were some cryptic one-liners I didn’t quite know how to handle. There was one particular moment where one of those one-liners fell dead in rehearsal, then also at the previews. At some point during previews I went to a dinner party with the author, and he dominated the evening with one great one-liner after another. He had this incredible throw-away manner, which brought huge laughs from the other guests, and as I watched, studied him, I got it. Don’t punch the one-liners. Throw them away. It was deceptively simple, but seeing this writer handle humor this way gave me the understanding of how to direct the actor in his work. I got him to throw away the line, and like magic, the audience roared.
So who wrote the piece? This question is too often overlooked by actors. Is it Woody Allen? Bertolt Brecht? Tennessee Williams? Every author has their own style, their own sense of humor, their own point-of-view. This can affect the choices you make as an actor. The kind of drunk you would play in a frathouse movie like Animal House is different from what you would play for Eugene O’Neill. It’s not that one of them is “more real” than the other, but the frathouse movie has a certain sensibility—wild, young, sexually charged, broadly comedic—and O’Neill a very different one—a deep, chronic, emotional and possessed kind of drunk. You have to be aware of the difference. If you’re playing in a farce like Noises Off, then the palette of choices you have as an actor is vastly different from the palette for Macbeth, because Noises Off’s zany world is quite a contrast from Shakespeare’s dramatic pathology. Perhaps the contrast between Noises Off and Macbeth is too stark, too obvious, but it’s only to make clear that the issue of Who’s The Author? needs the actor’s special attention.
Here’s a step far too often ignored: Read other works by the author. What are they after in their writing? Really investigate. Dig. Figure out the sensibility through their other plays and films. Or perhaps you’re dealing with a first-time author—if that’s the case, they’re probably available! Go out with them, meet them, go to a party as I did with that guy whose work I was directing. Try to nail down the humor, the intelligence, the point of view so you understand their writing. One way or another, get to know and be influenced by the writer. You’ve observed the phenomenon of certain authors who use the same actors again and again—this is because the actor understands them, their way, their voice, their style.
10. IMPROVISATION
I can’t mention this word in class without its being instantly linked by many of my students to “improv comedy.” I have embarked umpteen times on hour-long class discussions regarding this misunderstanding. I’m not putting down improv comedy—I think entertainment is great, I love to laugh as much as the next guy, and some fine actors have come from an improv background. But improv comedy is often not strictly improvisation, as it ends up blending with sketch writing that is pointed towards getting a laugh. Improv and sketch comedy can help to create comedic actors, but the potential downside is that it can emphasize and cement in the actor a kind of glibness that keeps things on the surface, shallow, not fully realized.
To me, improvisation is rooted in theatre history—the ageless struggle to make the dialogue real, spontaneous, as though spoken for the first time.
That method of acting, I say, which makes the words seem like a passage learned by rote, must be avoided and endeavor must be made above all other things to render whatever is spoken thoroughly effective, with suitable alteration of tones and appropriate gestures. The whole dialogue must seem like a familiar talk, wholly improvised.
Leone di Somi, Italian playwright and director (1527-1592)
Improvisation is a tool that I believe can help break down a clichéd, mechanical, by-rote rendering of a scene; it can throw the actor off balance, breaking him out of a lifeless expression. If you as an actor are frozen in the scene, improvisation can help release you from mechanical responses, freeing you to explore new choices, fresh insights, concepts that surprise you, your acting partners, and the audience.
improvisation, n. A course pursued in accordance with no previously devised plan, policy, or consideration. Sudden, unforeseen, unexpected. To bring about, arrange, make on the spur of the moment without preparation.
Here are some ways you can use improvisation to help you in your work:
Play the written scene, but use your own words to paraphrase the text. This can be particularly useful with an author like Shakespeare, where the nature of the language can be a real obstacle. But even contemporary authors may use words or phrasing that feel uncomfortable to you. Go ahead. Rehearsal is a free-fire zone—say it your way. Do what you need to do to discover the real intent of the communication. Then work your way back to the text using that understanding you gained through improvisation. It is a good idea when returning to the scene as written to keep improvising a bit. You get back into the script gradually, rather than all at once.
Set up a situation analogous to the written scene. Let’s say the written scene is about an employee leaving a job where the boss has been a real mentor to him. You could improvise a different kind of breakup, a son or daughter leaving home to go on their own, or perhaps even a romantic breakup. Improvise a scene with that subtext, so you can freely explore and uncover wonderful layers of behavior and emotional expression without the constraint of the written scene. Now go back to the scene. That employee/employer relationship will be a bit richer, more lively, the lines less predictable.
Explore a part of the story that is not included in the script, but relates to your scene. Let’s say you have a script about a couple getting divorced. The early moments of the relationship are not in the script. Here you could improvise the first date between them, or the incredible romance of the proposal. I did this once when working on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which the relationship between Brick and Maggie is perilously strained. I had the actors improvise a picnic where Brick proposed to her. The exercise was pretty quick. Maybe 10-15 minutes. Then back to the scene—the love that was now being rejected by Brick was much greater than before. So this kind of improvisation gives you and your partner the one thing that every character has more of than the actor playing him: a sense of the experience and history that the character has lived. You can develop that history through improvisation. This will add depth to your performance and enhance your experience with the other actors in your project.
Another technique is to use gibberish improv, where you say what you mean in a nonsensical language, or just sounds. This incites you to be more expressive, out of a deeper part of your talent. It gets you away from what Stanislavski called “the muscle of the tongue,” relying too much on the words. In addition, your acting partner now must really look at your body language and listen for any innuendos in the timbre of your voice to get an understanding of what is being communicated. He needs really to respond to you as the gibberish-talker, rather than merely listen for a cue.
Find the mistakes. Use improvisation by being alert and utilizing a “mistake” on stage, either in rehearsal or performance, to enhance the actor’s work: a letter is dropped, a glass falls and breaks, someone has difficulty putting on a coat. From the smallest to the largest mistake, the really fine actor should be able to use them as a springboard for further creative exploration. You should respond to a mistake as a person would—not be stuck by the fact that this mistake never happened in rehearsal. The director William Wyler would wait through many takes for one such mistake that would catch the actor off guard, and create a fresh reaction.
Improvisation is used as a tool to free creativity in many art forms. Musicians (especially in jazz) take off on a given theme to find new avenues of expression. But even Arthur Schnabel, the great classical pianist and interpreter of Beethoven, would sometimes deviate from the written score in an effort to express the music more powerfully, more personally. Painters often follow a free, unimpeded flow of color or form in order to discover new expressions. In the cases of Pollock, de Kooning, and Picasso, these flights of fancy often became their style, forming the very structure of their work.
This tradition of improvisation goes back to the commedia dell’arte and is used in contemporary work such as in the creation of A Chorus Line, Hatful of Rain, and many more recent films such as Secrets and Lies by the director Mike Leigh, who uses improvisation almost exclusively in writing his scripts. So feel free—improvise away, so as to find the author’s and your own truth.
(See also the Improvisation Exercise in the chapter “Class Exercises” for more on this topic.)
11. HUMOR
An actor comes home one day to find his house is a mess. Furniture has been overturned, everything is in a shambles. He runs upstairs to find his wife slumped on their bed, bruised and disheveled, weeping terribly. The actor rushes over and asks her, “Honey, what happened?” His wife answers, “Your agent. He came over here this afternoon—it was horrible. He was violent, he wrecked the house, and then he raped me!” The actor, eyes bugging out from shock, responds with reverence, “My agent was here?”
I’m always on the hunt for a good joke, and this one about the actor is one that I love. But humor is not just a joke or a funny line. What is humor exactly? And why is it important for the actor? Actually, why is it a must for the actor?
humor, n., the ability to perceive, enjoy or express what is amusing, comical, incongruous or absurd.
irony, n., a form of expression in which an intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning of the words used.
wit, n., the natural ability to perceive and express, in an ingeniously humorous manner, the relationship between seemingly unrelated things. Wit has truth in it, wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words —Dorothy Parker
The joke above allows the world and the actor to laugh, and then see the self-centeredness of actors. Humor is a point of view that allows one to realize and laugh at the ridiculousness of life. Try to play Hamlet without humor—it will be boring and impossible to endure.
One of the real stumbling blocks is the exaggerated significance that actors place on serious scenes. Their attitude or way of expression becomes stiff, overly dramatic, and thus often dull and repetitive. You want to say, “Enough, already!” The introduction of humor is a person’s way of trying to endure life, to not be so maudlin and martyred. Ladies and gentlemen, suffering needs the relief of humor. Mothers, please pay special attention!
My friend, the late Michael Shurtleff, a well-known playwright and casting director, said, “One would sometimes think actors are trying to reverse the life process by what they do when they act. They take humor out instead of putting it in. We have trouble believing a performance that has no humor. It is unlike life. The more serious the situation, the more we need humor to endure it.”
John F. Kennedy once said, “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.” There is an intelligence, an irony there that is so delicious. Quality humor and irony comes from that certain intelligence. It can’t just be one-liners or sight gags. Humor should reveal something to us, point out a facet of life that was unseen or perhaps feared or avoided. JFK may well have been put off by the fact that Paris went crazy more for his wife than for him—but the way he phrased it makes us laugh at the truth and makes clear that he maintained his dignity and intelligence.
12. TRUST
Hanging from a cliff, holding a thin, frayed rope—the rope seems to be giving way, thinner and thinner.... High above the ground, the rope seems ready to snap! That’s an artist as he takes dangerous risks. So what does this risk-taking seeming-madman need? More governmental support. No, just kidding. He needs trust. The confidence that all will be fine—that his risky choice will work. Trust. Trust. Trust must be your mantra, your key, the flying trapeze net. Fly, try, seem to die, but don’t be afraid—trust. Without trust, there can be no life, no art.
trust, n., a feeling of emotional security, resulting from faith in oneself. A firm belief in one’s powers, abilities or capacities.
You must know that any art that is worth its salt is a high-wire act, a cliff-hanger, a risk, a chance—so...that’s right, you got it: Trust. Trust your director, your writer, your acting partners, your teacher, and don’t forget your agent, but mostly...? Yeah, always trust yourself.
The great Anthony Quinn said that doubt and fear were his best friends—because they pushed him to find the truth, the answers to a character or a scene. Okay—if fear pushes you forward to explore more, that’s good. Insecurities are a part of any creative process, but don’t allow doubts to override your choices and creative work. Doubt, if it stops you in your tracks, is to be overcome with...that’s it. Yeah, you got it. We’re singing the same song.
13. BEING PERSONAL
“Poor Rosa.” That was the only line found in one of the scripts of the great Italian actress, Eleanor Duse. I think it means she really understood the role, really felt for Rosa, identified with her. The two simple words, “Poor Rosa,” were all Duse needed to be personal. So what does it mean to “be personal” in acting? It’s talked about a lot, but I feel the term is often misunderstood, misinterpreted.
personal, adj., 1. monogrammed with one’s name or initials, 2. individually owned, 3. inwardly felt, 4. close to one’s heart, 5. In acting: being affected by and allowing yourself to experience specifically what the character is going through on an emotional level.
Macbeth has to murder the king. He decides to do it, reluctantly. This is a kind of wild, not-easily-dealt-with, unusual circumstance. What must an actor do to make this event personal? He must determine the emotional state and behavior of the character, and then crawl his way into that experience. He has to get under Macbeth’s skin, feel the adrenaline, the fevered pulse, the panic of the reluctant murderer that Shakespeare wrote. The personal actor wants to get close to that feeling and understand it. He seeks out the behavior and emotional state, the personal connection, with his own blood, sweat, and tears. Stanislavski spoke of the “magic if”—What if I had the experience of this character? What would I do? How would I feel? The personal actor is on a quest for the answer to that “magic if.”
But note that I have not said the personal actor, being, say, from Texas, chooses that his Macbeth is from Houston. This is where actors seeking to be personal sometimes err. It’s not your personal biography that does the trick. It’s your personal feelings, your body, your physical responses that are needed. Nor does being personal mean you choose that the character’s personality is just like yours, particularly if by doing so you evade qualities necessary for the story. So if you’re a cool customer, an unflappable type, then it would also be a mistake to make your Macbeth this very cool person who doesn’t flinch at murder. Because Macbeth does—he flinches. So there’s the story—story is king, it can never be left out. Being personal is applying your emotions, your body, your physical responses, your blood, sweat and tears to a very specific story. An unflappable Macbeth from Houston may not satisfy our old friend William.
One time when I was directing a play, I had the problem that the two lead actors were not exactly into each other. It was affecting the chemistry of the couple in the play—I felt the coldness between them in the performances. Not good for a love story! So, I went to the actor and told him that the girl was a little cold because in fact she had a crush on him, and felt weird about it. Then I told the same thing to the actress about the leading man. Naughty of me, no? But it worked. Suddenly they were both affected by each other, the adrenaline was flowing between the two actors, and the play clicked from there on out.
I often say, “You are stuck with the character, and the character is stuck with you.” If you choose to connect a part of the story to the personal facts of your life, it’s done to spark your emotions—in other words, these facts must move you closer to the character and the story, otherwise they’re not relevant. Being personal doesn’t mean infusing a character, say a sweet, unassuming guy, with the physical rage you personally are feeling at your agents and the people who won’t cast you. Because unless you are able to take this rage, and cover it beautifully with the sweetness of the character, you will wreck the story about this unassuming guy.
The best acting requires personal investment, that you are personally involved, that somehow you are relating to the events of this story and letting them affect you in such a way that you leave the stage knowing that some part of you was left out there in service of the story. And perhaps that’s not technical enough for some, but to me that’s what being personal really is. What did it cost you? You are a prism. The light originates from the author and passes through you, and it’s not just refracted, it is changed by having passed through you. Each different actor will change the light differently, and that’s the magic of how your unique prism will create a true, personal experience in acting.
14. PATHOLOGY
Richard III. Is he Buddha’s cousin? In Hannah and Her Sisters, are they all Sisters Theresa? In the works of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare, David Mamet or Sam Shepard—do they have mostly delicate, innocent characters with no dark side? Is The Price about the meeting of the Archangel and St. Peter? Is A View from the Bridge about purity? No. Pathology abounds. I’m not advocating this condition as the answer to life. But as actors, you have to understand the morbid nature of many characters. As the medical pathologist studies the diseased cell in order better to understand the workings of the human body, the artist draws our attention to emotional pathology so that we may better understand the mind and spirit of a person. As an artist, you’ve got to probe and tap these pathologies within yourself or within your imagination or within your fantasies. Not to make yourselves sickos, not to make yourselves into neurotics, not to make yourself pathological. But to know how to play it. And there is for most characters a neurotic nature, isn’t there? The best movie that I ever saw about Christ was Pasolini’s movie, The Gospel According to St. Matthew. The actor plays him like a very troubled man. Very intense and violent, not just saintly. I don’t know that all Christians like it, but it’s very interesting. Of course, Christ’s story was surrounded with pathology; illness, torture, healing, and death.
pathology, n., 1. that which applies to physical, mental or moral conditions that have their origin in disease or marked abnormality. (Dracula) 2. a diseased mind subject to self-deception. (Blanche DuBois) 3. a morbid fascination for crime, death, and violence. (Richard III) 4. pathological liar: a person who habitually tells lies so exaggerated and bizarre that they are suggestive of mental disorder. (Iago)
I had a student in New York one time—I really had it out to bust this guy, because he was so damned spiritual. He was almost like a virgin. Or maybe he was. He was so pure. When he played the Yeshiva student in Yentl, he was incredible: pure, wonderful, loving. But how many roles are there like this? How many sweet, perfect beings are walking around? I don’t want to take somebody’s spirituality away from them in their life, but as an artist, you have to be able to create many aspects of different characters, some of those aspects associated with pathology. Now, are we all like my spiritual friend in New York? Nah. I don’t think so. I’d bet just about all of us have had a moment or maybe many moments where we have confronted a darker side to our personality, one not so shiny and polished and social. Right? C’mon admit it, you’ve had a hairy moment or two in your life. Agreed? Good, we can go on.
Pathology exists in comedies like The Odd Couple or Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy—and in romance. There’s a certain pathology in romance. And sex. Look at the greatest love story of all time: Romeo and Juliet. It isn’t just spiritual, saintly-sweet and romantic. Shakespeare said love is a disease. All through the story—violence, youthful rebellion, parental repression. Pathology. The French have an expression for orgasm, la petite mort, the little death. Pathology. It isn’t just cross the bridge into Romantic Paradise. Romeo and Juliet have one fervent moment, they make it together, and he’s gone. The next time they meet is in the tomb, and they both die. Pathology. Seek out its artistic influence on your imagination and emotions, and let it into your characters.
Pathology is part of life, part of all literature. You have to look within and accept that part of yourself in acting, and know that when used in service of art, it’s a gift. But you do have to be willing to admit that you’re not this perfect angel. You have to be willing to remember the time you drank too much, or when you were exhausted and that placid demeanor cracked into a temper, or when you actually felt a real hatred for a rival or even a family member. Just remember what one of those Russian guys said: “If you can kill a fly, you can play Othello.” These feelings are common to all of us at some point, and again, I’m not looking to drop you in an ocean of pathology and so into introversion. But a drop of the ocean is still the ocean, and that drop is enough to let you get close to the truth of a darker character, rather than sitting back and judging it from a moral high ground. Francis Bacon painted these feelings. Edgar Allan Poe wrote about them. And now, you may well be called upon to act them, and you mustn’t flinch or be shy about it.
15. OBJECTIVES
Let’s face it: We all know what it feels like to want something. Men with regard to certain automobiles can be quite a meditation on desire. Almost as ardent as a woman can be about that certain handbag. And then there are those concert tickets. The painting. That new gadget. A wristwatch. And of course, that woman. Or that man. The thought of acquiring the desired item becomes incessant, part of the moment to moment of your lives, often thought about quite feverishly. And yet, it’s not like you’re drooling either. Drooling and being stupid isn’t going to get you what you want. But the pulse races, the mind obsesses, the concentration is focused by desire. This is a lot of what I want to say about objectives. We all know innately what it is to want something, to chase something, to go after something—that’s what I mean by objectives: what the character is going after.
Your job as an actor is quickly to identify this desire within the character. Every story is about someone wanting something, and the obstacles they overcome to achieve it. Usually this objective is easily spotted, and then it’s a matter of firing up that desire within you so it’s hot, so it affects you in your work with the role.
I think too much analytical effort is expended on this topic. I’ve seen actors get too caught up in these objectives, too stilted in acting them out. Remember, people often hide, cover what they want, pretend not to want what they are pursuing. Since I don’t really push objectives so much in my teaching, actors sometimes ask me whether having a highly evaluated objective doesn’t counter what I teach about simply being a person, which is more my kind of emphasis. No, I don’t think so. To me, it’s easy to place the proper emphasis on objectives, while still working always to be a person, to reveal a simple human life. For example: I’ll bet all of you have had occasion to drive to a hotel or apartment for a tryst, either planned or improvised. Desire, yes? And sexual desire can be as obsessive as desire gets. But did you drive like a maniac? I don’t think so. You don’t want to get into an accident. You don’t want a speeding ticket. You don’t want that unnecessary delay or distraction or attention, you don’t want anything to get in the way of your tryst. And yet the pulse is racing and the mind absorbed while you drive, yes, with some hot intention, but also carefully. To the observer in the car next to you, you may be just this very calm person driving a car, but the fever is there, underneath. The objective is sometimes hidden from view. When I was young, I would help my father when he came home, making him some tea, fetching his slippers, and offering warm, concerned conversation. My objective? Get the keys to the car!
So try to understand these objectives from a life standpoint. Observe yourself and others going after what they desire, and learn to translate these objectives in a human way from words into action. So watch out that you don’t go on a head trip about objectives—it’s not an academic exercise, but hopefully a simple analysis of what the character wants. That part is usually pretty easy. Then you have to ignite that fire within you so that as the concentration focuses on what you want, the pulse moves, the hands want to shake—now, in a very experiential way, you can deal with how you express the desire or objective: Cover it completely? Reveal it intimately? Scream it to the world? Or perhaps some piece of all of these as you act through the story.
16. SPECIFICS
A scene from the play, Art, was done recently in my class, with two very talented guys fighting it out and insulting each other deliciously. But yet the scene didn’t quite work. There was a set full of furniture there, but I joked with them afterwards that I wanted to send a crew up on stage as they acted to remove the furniture. They weren’t using it. Replace the couch and the bar with lecterns, and maybe it would have worked—it was more of a debate than a real fight. They stood across from each other and hurled witty remarks. It was funny, but it wasn’t specific. They weren’t specifically affecting each other as much as they should have. Nor was the set specifically used by either of them. It wasn’t really anyone’s apartment.
The night before, two actors in another class were doing a scene from It Happened One Night, and they wanted some rain. So they gave the whole front row of students in class some squirt bottles full of water, who aimed them high above the actors, and they played a good part of the scene under a cascade of droplets coming from the sky. I loved it. They wanted rain. They went and got rain. For about $12 in squirt bottles. They were specific about it, they achieved it, and it was delicious—the imagination, the fun of it.
Specifics relate to every aspect of the work, to every item on this checklist. The event: What, specifically is going on? At a Mafia wedding it isn’t just throwing rice, it’s about the favors asked of the Don. In Girl on the Via Flaminia, it’s that she’s a virgin—that specificity of event. Evaluation: How cold is it, Johnny? The humor of his response was in how specific it was. So cold that a polar bear is wearing his mink. So what is the specific evaluation? Or physical state: what kind of limp, or cold virus, or heat, or headache? You have to nail these things. You have to nail them specifically. A generality will leave you and the audience unmoved, unclear, uninvolved. The more specific you are, the more you and the audience gets drawn in to what you’re creating.
A costume problem for an actor playing a bum: specifically what kind of bum? What kind of hat, what trousers, what vest? How soiled should his clothing be, and where did he find them? In a rich man’s garbage can? In the trash bin of a thrift store? A specific choice is needed in professional work to reveal the individuality of this character. Brecht spoke about a young actor in his company, playing a homeless guy, who went nuts trying to find the costume—which jacket, which hat? The actor finally solved it by finding a toothbrush, and putting it in the breast pocket of his soiled jacket—that little specific prop gave the character a certain dignity the actor was looking for. And Kazan spoke of costuming—he said to look at “how people dress as an expression of what they wish to gain from an occasion. How their attire is an expression of each day’s mood and hope.” Specifics.
Or think of Peter Falk as Columbo—the choice of the raincoat and the old Peugeot. Those were Falk’s own specific choices that he felt revealed the essence of this very unglamorous—yet very human—detective, and gave him a certain behavior, this down-to-earth guy who doesn’t look as if he could be much of a threat, but in actuality is very much a threat. I like specific choices that lead to specific behavior, specific emotional responses. I don’t like so-called “specifics” that get into unnecessary character biography: These tend to be academically oriented choices that exist only in the actor’s head. Specifics need to exist in the fabric of the work, the behavior, the life on stage. If the only way I can know your specific choice is by your telling me about it after the fact—then I’ll try to get you to make that specific choice clearer and more alive in the performance.
Specifics relate to training itself: If the actor has a speech problem, determine specifically what the problem is, then do vocal exercises selected to correct that problem. For a problem with physical tension, specify in what part of the body the tension lies, and release the tension in that area. Details. Specifics. Without them, you’re dead as an actor—in training, in the work itself, in administration—all of it.
17. USE OF OBJECTS
I’ve broken down the use of objects into four categories:
1) Simple physical objects: Here’s a wine glass. It’s empty. Where’s the bottle? Ah there it is, let me go get that and refill my glass....
I remember in my first scene as an actor at university, I had to deal with a wine glass as part of the scene. I was nervous, I was worried I would spill it, I wasn’t natural at all. I just couldn’t do it. So while simple physical objects, simple props, may seem an elementary topic, the fact is that the actor almost has to relearn how to use simple objects in his work. We use simple objects all day everyday, but actors have to make it seem natural under the duress of performance. So don’t forget that people do things. Observe the conversations around you, and you’ll see all sorts of behavior with coffee cups, eyeglasses, household items, phones, etc. Actors, on the other hand, often will just stand on stage and play the lines to each other. So go ahead, sit in that couch, live in it. Feel the weight of that glass. The texture. The configuration of the object. See something in the object you’ve never seen before. This will make you more alert, more alive in the moment of dealing with the objects, and therefore you will be more comfortable. Don’t be afraid to surround yourself with objects and really use them. Use of simple physical objects gives your acting a behavioral foundation.
2) Personal objects: Hey, this is my shaving gear. I know how to use this with my eyes closed. That’s my makeup kit and mirror—I use that every day. I know where the latch catches and how it needs a little coaxing to open....
Personal objects help the actor because using your own books, kitchen utensils, photographs, makeup kit, shaving gear, or the like helps you feel at home, doing real tasks, not make-believe. It’s your own object, so you may connect to it in a much more personal way than if it were just a prop from the theatre. Personal objects can connect you with the life on stage because they’re familiar, and so the tasks and your overall behavior become more natural.
3) Personal emotional objects: Now here’s a photograph of my father. This is something different. This takes me to another place. And here’s my diary. Wow, did I really feel that way back then? The images are really flying now....
Objects that have an emotional connection for the actor have been employed since theatre began. Remember the Greek actor from ancient times, who placed the ashes of his dead son on stage to feed him emotionally. Don’t be limited by the author’s use of objects; feel free to bring anything that helps you in the scene. In The Three Sisters, Chekhov has you speak of the longing to go to Moscow, but as you rehearse, the scene is dead for you. Then you bring a brooch that evokes deep memories, a longing emotion is triggered within you: the scene jumps to life. A personal emotional object can be the catalyst that sets off a chain of emotional reactions. Sometimes this personal object has so much power it becomes the scene itself. A friend of mine carries with him a buckeye, a polished seed from the buckeye tree about the size of a walnut in the shell. When he touches this seed in his jacket pocket, the texture of it triggers in him a memory of his brother on the bluffs over a Kentucky creek, carefree and adventurous. Now this memory makes him feel a terrible longing and sadness for his brother who, in later life, suffered a mental breakdown. Why he carries this buckeye with him, I don’t quite understand, but it works every time.
4) Personal inner objects: Okay, here I am at the audition—I wish I could bring some props in with me, but that’s not practical. I need something to spark that emotion.... Hold on, I remember that necklace my grandmother gave me the last time I saw her, let me think on that for a moment. Yeah, now I feel it....
As a child, I waited sometimes for hours for my uncle to come and take me with him on a trip. He owned a trucking company and as I saw him approach in the big red truck, I became excited as hell. Sometimes when he was running behind schedule, he would not stop but go speeding by. The feeling of uncontained joy as I saw him approach, as well as the feelings of sadness, anger, and real grief as he passed me by, are ones I have tapped into many times, merely by focusing and concentrating on that red truck, that inner object. Music can be a great catalyst for finding inner objects—it is often linked to specific places and events that trigger feelings you can use. Ditto with aromas—a certain perfume that reminds you of a person, and an experience you had with that person that is able to knock your socks off—all this is good fuel for an actor.
18. ARBITRARY CHOICES
In Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, a woman, seemingly sedate, repressed and in control, one rainy night dashes naked from her house and throws herself on the muddy lawn. Is this logical behavior? On the surface, no. But buried in the life experience of this character is a certain logic, revealed through this arbitrary behavior—a kind of rebellion—that becomes a wonderfully expressive example of how a potentially “illogical” action can often actually determine the truth of a moment.
Actors should learn to look for the arbitrary choice, which is an imaginative action that seems contrary to the logic of the scene or the character. So you see, using logic in acting should not limit you merely to choices that “make sense” on a surface level. Actors often will suppress such an impulse, however, as some voice within them warns, “The character wouldn’t do that.” Don’t drop that choice so fast. Examine it and even act it out. See if you can work it into the story of your character—it could lead you to gold. As Juliet, you find yourself on a balcony with Romeo, and you have an impulse to kiss him passionately, and even aggressively want to seduce him. Do it. Don’t think to yourself, “It wouldn’t be logical for a prim, morally correct daughter of a strict family to kiss a stranger like this.” Sometimes the given circumstance forces the character to do something quite different from what we, and even the character, expected. Be alert to the fact that a character’s logic may seem at times illogical, even crazy. People often reveal themselves by doing the opposite of what you expect. Kazan: “Character is revealed through contradiction.” Following the contradictory impulse is exciting. Go with the impulse, the arbitrary choice, see if you can make it work with your Juliet, her story. Be bold, kiss your Romeo, and then possibly make your way back to the more conventional, scripted “not tonight.”
Writers often will use the tool of an arbitrary choice to develop a richness in their characters. In The Pawnbroker, a film about a Jewish shop owner who had previously been in a Nazi concentration camp, there is a particular kind of behavior and emotion, so that when gunmen enter his shop to rob him, he doesn’t react as another pawnbroker might and give in, fearful for his life. This pawnbroker resists them, under the threat of death, with no regard for his own life. The logic is that because of his past horror of surviving the Holocaust, this pawnbroker has very little care any more, he’s numb.
From my ancestors: Medea, at the beginning of the play, has the simple logic of a loving mother to her children. We see this fully at every turn. Her logic is love and its sweet demonstration toward her children. But then the tragic threat of losing her husband and her children to another woman forces her into an emotional logic which springs from this same love, but becomes totally opposite, totally arbitrary: In an insane, jealous rage, she murders her own children to prevent them from going with their evil father and new stepmother. Her apparent logic of sweetness and love splinters into bloody violence and death. So as actors you can use the same mechanism, the arbitrary choice, to create a new logic, something perhaps the writer didn’t give you. You’re not changing the writing, of course—but choosing something deeper that ends up revealing more about a character than would the conventional choice. (For further discussion of arbitrary choices, see the chapter, “Arbitrary Choices.”)
19. MOMENT TO MOMENT, PART 1: BELIEF
Flexibility is to respond to the moment, not through any preconceived ideas—but directly, immediately. Immediacy is flexibility. You look to the situation, you become aware of the situation, you are sensitive to the situation—and then you act. The action comes through the encounter of the situation and you, not from a preconceived thought.
—Rajneesh (Osho), Indian mystic and philosopher
Did you ever sit through a movie or play and have that depressing realization that you don’t believe a single thing going on—nothing makes any sense, you don’t believe the two stars are attracted to each other, no one is really listening to each other, and storylines lead nowhere? Suddenly your mind is busy with the notion of just walking out of the theatre, before another minute of your life is wasted. For me, unfortunately, this happens too often.
Belief is crucial for a successful movie or play—but before it happens in the audience, it must happen for you the actor. In your performance, do you believe what is occurring for you, moment to moment? I often refer to it as “tracking”—following a clear track of what is going on in the scene. So don’t jump the track. When executing a behavior or action, follow it through. If the actor has chosen that the character is drunk, does he stay in line with the appropriate behavior, or does the actor suddenly drop the drunken state halfway through the scene? If you’re a witness in a courtroom scene, listen to the question being asked, and answer as if you were really coming up with it right then, not as if you were reading off a page. You have to convince the jury you were not coached. Part of how you do that is of course simply to listen, to receive the information for the first time. It seems so easy—this concept of listening. It’s so crucial to the art of acting, and yet it is one of the most frequent problems I see: Actors don’t quite really listen to each other. You must be open and receptive, and really hear what your partner is saying. Let it land, and I mean “land” like those Apollo missions to the moon—those vehicles left their footprints in the sand up there, and those prints are still there. Did the line you just heard from your acting partner leave an imprint on you? It has to hit you as if for the first time. You know it’s coming, but you can’t anticipate the line, nor how it will affect you until you hear it—you have to truly discover the scene, or life itself, by listening and responding moment to moment.
That’s a kind of tracking—the basic idea that the character doesn’t always know what to say, and has to formulate a specific answer before speaking. When playing lovers, are the two actors really creating an intimacy with each other, or is there a guardedness between them, a physical shyness, or a bored kind of disinterest covered by pretended passion, making the audience conscious of the fact that these are just two actors and not real lovers? So actors, get to it, and passionately connect with and track the love for each other.
So the actors must believe in what’s going on. The more you believe, the more you experience, and the more you experience, the more you believe—and so it goes. This is the same in life as it is in acting—the more you believe in what you’re doing, the more expansive you become and the greater experience you will have. Say you’re acting with your partner who’s playing your husband, but you’ve never been married and when you do wed, it certainly won’t be to this guy you’re working with. Touch his face lightly. Find some feeling of intimacy in that touch. There will be something—the actor looks at you tenderly, he now lightly brushes the hair out of your face. Here’s the real start of your relationship. Here’s the beginning of your experience. So belief and experience feed off each other and lead to moment-to-moment work.
I will sometimes refer to “the delicatessen owner.” The deli owner is the blue-collar, common-sense guy in the audience who quite correctly refers what he is seeing on stage, TV or film to the experiences of his own life, to see if this performance seems real to him. This guy doesn’t know about acting. He may not know about abstract painting or atonal music, but he knows about love and sex and behavior with his wife, Bessie. If the deli owner sees two lovers on stage, behaving stiffly, without any real passion, constantly covering themselves to make sure they aren’t exposing too much flesh, he might lean to his wife and whisper, “Bessie, darling, it wasn’t like that when we were first in love!” You’re dead as an actor when that happens.
If you’re reading this and thinking this is a problem for beginning actors—you’re wrong. The issue of moment-to-moment belief and experience is not just an elementary acting problem. I’d say that much of my work as a teacher even with highly professional actors has to do with this kind of work. It often happens that the working professional actor goes on a certain creative autopilot—they’re a regular on a series, or they book frequent work, and it all somehow becomes a routine. Bit by bit, they start to disassociate themselves from the real communication occurring in their scenes. They don’t really respond to what other actors are doing, so when one actor feeds the other a moment, our autopilot actor doesn’t quite respond to it, not really—he just says the next line. This kind of disconnected communication is like a virus—when you let one moment like this go by, it gets in your system, multiplies, and takes over the acting. The belief isn’t quite there, and then the real participation, moment to moment, which is the very lifeblood of acting, dissipates rapidly. For a professional who is still hired a lot and sometimes highly paid, cynicism sets in—the actor is applauded or paid well when they’re really “phoning it in” mechanically instead of truly discovering the communication moment-to-moment.
An actor has to maintain a certain wild innocence—about his acting, about the script: An actor reads the script, so of course he knows what’s going to happen in this story. But through fully realized moment-to-moment work, he discovers these events anew and experiences it all as though for the first time, and takes us with him in that discovery. That’s acting, man. That’s what I mean by innocence. Some directors are even known for withholding the later parts of the script from the actor, thus enforcing this innocence.
So ask yourself again—are you really responding to the situation step by step as a down-to-earth person would, reacting simply to each step, moment-to-moment, not anticipating, not jumping ahead to the results of the scene? Concentrate on the moment you are in—don’t look ahead. The connection to your partner is a very important element here. Be like the sharp tennis player who is ready, alive and attuned to whatever his opponent sends him—the lob, the hard smash, the clever spin. This is in a way a state of listening—really perceiving what your partner sends your way. If you’ve ever seen a bird dog “tracking” his prey, he never loses sight, sound, smell of his prey for an instant. He is alert to whatever his prey does. And he responds to it. So when you study the concept of moment-to-moment, you’re really studying the beat of life itself. In life, hopefully, you live moment to moment, believing as you go. Maybe the study of acting can improve your life—this attention to moment-to-moment belief can help you avoid an automatic, mechanical way of living and of acting. The concept of really listening and responding to people can lead you away from cynicism and open you to experience a fuller life, as well as being a more expressive artist.
20. MOMENT TO MOMENT, PART 2: ALTERNATIVES
To be or not to be? That is the question....
Most interpret this line in simple terms as Hamlet’s decision to live or to die. I see it a bit differently: I believe he means to be—to be a person of action, a person of quality, and to act as such a person would—or not to be—simply to melt away, both physically and spiritually. There’s more to it than just living or dying. What does it mean to live? What does living require of a prince, of anyone? That’s what Hamlet is asking.
Meanwhile, over in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, as he often does, invites us to deal quite directly with alternatives: He makes Juliet struggle in her monologue, desperately trying to decide whether to take the potion that will make her appear to be dead for a period of time, then wake up in the tomb where they will bury her, where she can again meet up with her lover. Paraphrasing her words: Maybe the potion will poison me! Or I’ll wake too early and the bones of my ancestors may come alive and scare the hell out of me. Oh, but if I don’t take it I may never be with my love, Romeo. Choices. Alternatives. Agony. Life! But most actresses are not engaged in that desperate decision—after all it’s a very famous play and a very famous monologue and everyone out there knows she’s going to take the potion.... Ah, but there’s the rub.
Back to A Streetcar Named Desire: A moment occurs during that dinner scene I talked about earlier, where Blanche calls Stanley a Polack. There is a pause. Stanley thinks for a moment what his answer to this might be, before he impulsively smashes his dishes and food onto the floor. He has in the moment made this brutal choice. He has many possible choices before he comes up with his answer: Hit Blanche. Hit Stella. Hit both of them. Leave the table. Pack up and move out. Lecture them both about the pitfalls of this kind of prejudice. But he decides to smash his dishes, and that’s what makes him Stanley. But what does he go through? What thoughts, what emotions, what possibilities does he consider before he determines what he will do? What alternatives? These possibilities are the subtext of his life before he impulsively smashes the dishes. But too often, the actor playing Stanley is not considering what could happen in this moment—and I say that process of considering what to do in this moment is as important as the action he takes.
What to do? Which way to go? Should I marry her, or no? I like her family. Well, not altogether. Not really. Definitely not her mother. I should get out of the relationship. It’s going nowhere fast. So drop it! No, no, no. Don’t drop it. After all, I love her so.... Then, at the wedding ceremony, the groom must ultimately decide. Do I go ahead with this or not? Often he doesn’t know until the last second, and then he’s been known to walk out, and the same with the bride, as in movies like The Graduate or Runaway Bride. Or like that story in the news a way back about that girl who was on her way to get married, but she’d also bought a bus ticket that was in her purse. And she chose the ticket—blew off the wedding and disappeared, until they found her several days later. I love that image—all dressed for the wedding, but a bus ticket is in her purse. I wish more actors had this metaphorical bus ticket with them when they act.
Life. The weighing of possibilities. There are good points in choosing a way to go, and yet there are bad ones as well. So what to do? This is the very beat of life. In our daily lives we are constantly in the midst of deciding. Should we go to work or stay home because we don’t feel well? Is it really that we don’t feel well enough to work, or are we faking this malady, or maybe just emphasizing it a bit, to convince ourselves and others that bedrest is what we need? Maybe we get dressed and ready to go, but then, at the last second, just as we open the door, we decide to stay home.
Whether I’m watching a scene in class or a professional production, there’s something very simple that I look for: Is this a real person I’m looking at—someone who is alive to the moment, openly and innocently responding and deciding what to do as he goes? Or, conversely, is this an actor—someone who only has in mind a very specific line and action that the author has written, and is waiting to deliver that line and action—and only that—when cued by that other line that the author has written, being said by another actor, who is waiting for his cue, on and on in an uneventful, unsuspenseful, unsurprising way? Without this exploration of alternatives, I believe the result is a static, boring kind of acting. A predictable kind of acting. It is this predictability that bores me. When an actor struggles between alternatives, then makes his choice, it gives both him and the audience a sense of surprise.
Recently I saw in class a scene from Fatal Attraction, where the husband confesses to his wife that he had an affair. The scene was well played, emotional, real—but predictable. I asked the actor a simple question: “What if your wife would have responded differently? What if she had said, That’s okay. I knew it anyway. I’m cool. It happens.” The actor was stumped. Why was he stumped? It wasn’t the response he had rehearsed. It wasn’t in the script. And yet it is a possible response, probably the one he dreams, against the odds, that she will have.
Othello. Shakespeare. Alternatives. Should I kill Desdemona or no? Yet I’ll not shed her blood, nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, and smooth as monumental alabaster, yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men. Choices, possibilities. When you are standing next to Desdemona and you are deciding which alternative to follow—to kill her or to love her—you must fully believe in both. Actors too often believe only in the road the author has laid out. They must believe in all the roads. As Frost wrote, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Othello: To kill or to love? Each choice must be real and absolutely possible until you finally decide. This is not a drill. It’s not an exercise. It’s something that should be part of your performance. God, I love her. How can I even dream of killing her? But the bitch did it with Cassio. Death. No, I love her.... Each alternative should be explored as deeply as the one the author has written, and each should almost happen until at the last second you decide. Kill her.
With regard to all the tools discussed on this Checklist, know that your understanding of the circumstances of the play, your inherent belief in the situation, the responses between you and your acting partners, and your imagination can all come into play and be sufficient so that you do not necessarily need to kill yourself nailing every single item in every single scene you play. Don’t get academic—no five-page papers, please. This should not be intellectual work. Doing a great scene does not mean that you can identify all 20 items and how they specifically affected you. This checklist exists to serve you, not the other way around. It could be that just really nailing the physical state will inform the entire scene and your performance will take off just using that. Strasberg said, “If you don’t have a headache, don’t take an aspirin.” All the techniques of acting are to be used only when needed.
A REVIEW OF THE CHECKLIST
1. What is the event? What’s going on in this scene? Not the theme. Just what’s going on. Have I experienced anything like that? Yeah. And how did I behave? Some ideas there. Okay.
2. Evaluation. Am I on fire? Are the choices hot enough, alive? This scene is loaded. The stakes are high. Am I ready for that, or do I need to assume the position? Okay.
3. Behavior. What am I doing physically in this scene? I can’t allow myself just to sit here and say lines. What else can I do to be more alive? Push-ups? Clean the room? Put on makeup? Okay.
4. Physical/Emotional State. Am I drunk? Enough? Do I feel sexy? Am I drugged, in pain? Or am I supposed to be feeling great? Just had a good food, feeling exhilarated? Am I really nailing this? And is the state consistent throughout the scene? Is it cold the entire time? Or do I warm up during the scene? How do my emotions vary in the scene? I’ve got to figure that out specifically. Okay.
5. What happened before the scene? Did I just finish the New York Marathon? Did I just get fired? Is it raining outside? So am I wet? Out of breath from the stairs? And how does that change now that the scene has begun? Am I tracking that clearly and logically? Okay.
6. Creative Hiding. Can I play part of the scene into the tablecloth? Weep into it? Play with my hat as I woo her? Or play the sunset instead of her eyes? Can I be freer through fiddling with the scarf? Okay.
7. Be a person. Am I like an actor on a stage or am I a person? My character is a person. Is my behavior coming from the real life of the character? Am I just trying to be emotional, or am I a person trying to control their emotions, as on the six-o’clock news? Okay.
8. Inner and Outer Life: “The Cover.” Play the clown for her and pretend the pain inside is nothing? Or play the pain more and less charm? Get more personal and specific with inner turmoil? I know I’ll lose her—feel that? Or play more the social, easy behavior and attitude and let the inner pop out later, surprise myself and them? I need to ensure I’m not “playing the cover” without anything cooking underneath. Okay.
9. Who’s the author? Who wrote this? Woody Allen? Bertolt Brecht? Tennessee Williams? What is this author after? What is his or her specific point of view on life? What is her style? What is his sense of humor? What other works are there by the author? Have I read them for clues? Okay.
10. Improvisation. I’ll pretend I’m going to marry Ophelia, and we’ll improvise my proposal and see where that takes us. Shakespeare’s language is tough—let me say it in my own words for a while, then get back to the Bard. Let’s improvise the first night of our honeymoon, see what that does for the scene. Or just be silent for a while, let the scene be within us. Loose and easy, don’t push for the scene. Okay.
11. Humor. Am I using humor? People use humor all the time to help deal with hardship—am I doing that? Is it too much to suddenly act like Noel Coward, as Brando did at the end of Last Tango in Paris? Cover that pain with a put-on, humorous, English accent? Joking with her? Yeah, that can work. All the great performances have humor, they have charm, they have irony. Okay.
12. Trust. Do I believe in my choices? Am I having fun? Am I confident in what I’m doing? I know it will be there, I will make it be there. I’ve got my choices. I understand this guy. Let’s go. Okay.
13. Being Personal. Am I personally involved in this scene? Am I telling the right story? Being personal doesn’t mean I decide the character is from my home town. This needs to cost me something: My emotional involvement. My blood, sweat, and tears, while I serve the story. Okay.
14. Pathology. How sick is this character? How compulsive? Am I giving in to the violence? I have some seed of this in my life. Use it. Expand on it. Remember, he will do anything to possess her. Okay.
15. Objectives. The character wants to be king, don’t deny it. Do I want it enough? I know what it means to want something. Go for it. Remember, at any cost he wants to seduce her, so am I doing all I can to get her? Caution is not my friend. Okay.
16. Specifics. Is this my Hamlet, personal and specific? Do I have the father? Is he real to me? The image of my mother in bed with my uncle—do I have that? It’s late at night. Do I have the specific feeling of late at night; not tired, but hyper? The choice of Hamlet’s angry explosion, do I have that nailed? Really? Okay.
17. Use of Objects. Am I using physical objects to connect myself with this environment? Maybe some of my own personal objects will make me more comfortable. Or how about one that has more emotional value for me? Yeah, let me use one of those. Any inner objects I can think of that will help me connect with moments in the scene? Okay.
18. Arbitrary Choices: Kazan says, “Character is revealed through contradiction.” What inner struggle is my character going through that might be revealed through an arbitrary choice? Some kind of illogical choice that actually fits the truth of this guy? Okay.
19. Moment to moment: Belief. Can this scene be tracked? Am I responding to things moment to moment? Am I really listening, taking the time to respond as a person would? Am I discovering each moment as it happens? The more I experience, the more I’ll believe, and the more I believe, the more I’ll experience. Okay.
20. Moment to moment: Alternatives. The script says my character leaves his wife. But have I explored the opposite? That he stays? Maybe he tries to stay, but at the last second he can’t. Real people go through tough decision making before choosing the way to go. So as an actor, I need to go through that process, even though the final action has been determined by the author. I have to participate in the process. That needs to be part of my performance. Okay.