The Acting Book

• How do the characters make a living?

This isn’t such an obvious question as you might think. Yes, if you’re working on a production of Hobson’s Choice, you can be pretty sure that most of the characters earn a living by making and selling shoes. On the other hand, most of the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest don’t have to earn a living at all, they are just rich. Some of the smaller characters in the play have to work: Merriman is a butler, Reverend Chasuble is obviously a rector, and Miss Prism is a governess, but what do they actually do? Merriman serves the tea, but did he prepare it? Does Miss Prism teach? And if she does, what is her best subject?

But these are specific circumstances. We all know that money makes the world go round and it is impossible to live without it, so what the actors need to do is discuss how each of the characters gets their money. How much do they have, how much do they need, and if they work, what do they do to get it and how much time does it take up?

• What are the characters’ attitudes to money?

For some people, money is vitally important and for others it’s a necessary evil that they try to avoid thinking about. Some people splash money about even if they don’t have much, while others are remarkably tight-fisted even if they have a stash. Money creates security, but some people never feel secure unless they are getting more and more. We have loads of phrases to describe how particular people feel about money: spendthrift, miser, tightwad, philanthropist, big spender, etc. It’s an emotive subject which often dictates a person’s behaviour, so each actor should make a decision about their character’s attitude to money.

• How do the characters spend their money?

Do they spend their money on clothes? Or fast cars? Gambling? Holidays? Maybe the characters only earn enough to keep themselves warm, dry and fed. Or maybe they don’t even have enough money for that. What would Vladimir and Estragon – the two tramps in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – spend money on if they found some? New shoes? A slap-up meal? A bottle of wine? But being a tramp is an extreme case. Most people have enough money to get by, plus some extra to spend on a few luxuries. The way that the characters in a play or film handle money is another insight into their personalities.

• What is the power structure amongst the characters in the play?

Relationships between the characters in a play or film are often influenced by the status that each person may hold in the social order. If we look at an extended family living in a big house with servants, such as you might find in a period drama, the father of the family would tend to be the patriarchal figure and would perhaps have the highest status in the house. But it could be that his ageing dominant mother is living with them, as in the television series Downton Abbey. In this case there is a conflict of power, since the male of the family would traditionally have the higher status. Then, of course, there are the children of the family who, on the one hand, may be able to boss the servants around, while on the other, may have to obey rules that the servants have been told to enforce. The servants will also have their own power struggles amongst each other. As will the children. The permutations are endless.

Then, of course, a character would behave quite differently with a person who is lower than them in the social order than they would with someone who is higher than them. This is often highlighted in films or plays about the army, when a sergeant-major is seen bullying the privates and then behaving in a massively servile manner with the commissioned officers. In 1959, Rod Steiger played the title role in a film called Al Capone about the famous Chicago gangster. Having previously played second fiddle to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, Steiger grabbed the opportunity of playing the lead role and gave the performance of his life. The film tells the story of the gangster’s rise to power from a young, poverty-stricken kid to one of the most feared Mafia leaders of all time. At the beginning of the film, when Capone is a teenager trying to join Johnny Torrio’s gang, Steiger is running around, cap-in-hand, opening doors for people, keeping his head lowered and ready to do anything for anyone. Towards the end of the film when Capone is at the height of his success, Steiger is overwhelmingly powerful. Shouting and screaming. Throwing women around. Steiger, who was trained in ‘The Method’ at the Actors Studio along with Marlon Brando, had a great understanding of the effect that this change of status would have on the character he was playing.

• What are the gender politics of the time?

When you are rehearsing a play that is from another cultural era, it is important that all the actors agree about the prevailing gender politics, even if their characters don’t subscribe to them.

This is really important because gender politics are a moveable feast. Ask any actress who has played Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. It’s a great part, full of power, wit and life, and anyone would leap at the chance to play her. The trouble is, she gets ‘tamed’ at the end of the play by Petruchio and has to deliver a speech (in 5.2) about how she thinks women should behave. She tells everyone: ‘Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, / Thy head, thy sovereign…’, and then she goes on: ‘Such duty as the subject owes the prince, / Even such a woman oweth her husband.’ She ends the whole speech by saying: ‘And place your hands below your husband’s foot; / In token of which duty, if he please, / My hand is ready, may it do him ease.’ Well! There are very few people in the West today who would believe that a woman should be servile to her husband, let alone place her hand beneath his foot, and actresses often struggle with how to play this speech. Some have made it ironic, some have made her seem to take on an even higher status than Petruchio as she speaks, and some have cast aside the gender politics of today and gone for a version that would have pleased Elizabethan audiences.

• What is the power structure in love relationships?

As we all know, there are many different versions of the way that people in love behave with each other. Each situation is different. Relationships can often survive on a continual unspoken negotiation of power. Sometimes one person is the dominant figure, sometimes the other.

Then there is the way that people in a relationship learn how to get what they want. An apparent supplication can, in fact, be a way of exercising power over another person. Giving status can often be more successful than taking status. Relationships also exist where one person decides to exercise total egocentric power over their partner. Power is a strong magnet and it can make the other person feel safe, but desperate for attention. ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ is the mantra.

But, generally speaking, good relationships are based on a continually updated power structure which is satisfactory for both partners, while bad ones are based on an unbalanced bias towards one partner’s demands at the expense of the other. There are many variations to both positive and negative relationships.

• How do the characters take meals?

Of all the ritual activities, eating is probably the most public. It’s also a ritual that varies from period to period and culture to culture. So the actors need to reach a mutual understanding of how the characters in a play or film would take a meal. Do they cook their own food, or do they have servants who will cook for them? Would they sit around a table in a room designated for eating, or would they have a tray on their laps as they watch television from the sofa? Do they say grace? Do they eat together? Do they often have guests? There are many variations of the eating ritual, and the actors need to discover the socially accepted version appropriate to the play or film. Then they can each decide whether their character conforms to it or not.

• How do the characters wear their clothes?

The actors will already have done a lot of research into the fashions of the period, and some decisions will have been made about the clothes their characters would actually wear. Now it is worth discussing how much each of the characters cares about the way they dress. Some people think carefully about colour coordination, while others just bung on any old thing. Some people’s clothes are always new and in good condition, while other people love to wear comfortable things that they’ve had for years. A character’s interest in clothing may be entirely different from the actor’s own personal interest.

• How do the characters deal with children?

The way we relate to children can sometimes be quite revealing. Some people just ignore them, while others make them part of any social occasion. Sometimes children are expected to behave like mini-adults, and sometimes they are cosseted and never allowed to grow up. Some are treated like servants, while others are treated like friends. The way that people deal with their offspring is often dictated by the cultural environment. But not always. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of personal preference.

And then there is the way that each character relates to children on a one-to-one basis. Even if there are no children in the script, this is worth exploring. Children are able to see through deceptive behaviour very quickly, so the way a character behaves with children can be an insight into how they behave when they are being honest and direct.

• How do the characters feel about the older generation?

In Western culture there is such a cult of youth that getting old is considered to be some sort of failure, and people go to great lengths to try to turn back the hands of time. But in other cultures, old age is respected and old people are venerated for their wisdom and experience. As above, the actors need to agree on the prevailing attitudes to age in the period and culture of the play or film, but each actor also needs to have some idea of how their particular character feels about old age.

• How do the characters socialise?

As I touched on earlier, eating is often a time for socialising, but so is drinking alcohol, watching football or playing a sport. People sometimes book group outings to the theatre or do courses in pottery or painting simply so they can meet other people.

The way that people socialise can sometimes be useful when deciding how to set a scene, particularly when you are filming. Maybe a game of squash underpins the dialogue of a scene or maybe it takes place in a crowded restaurant. These settings are obviously not so easy to incorporate when actors are working on a stage play, but a game of cards is possible. Or a game of chess. Sometimes a social event is part of the way a scene is written, like the party scene in Romeo and Juliet, but how would the people actually behave in a social event like this? Would there be loads of laughter and flirting, or would the whole thing be rather formal and polite? The way people socialise in the particular culture or period of history is something that actors can use to bring life to a scene.

• How do the characters participate in religion – if at all?

In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Isabella, who is a novice nun, has a moral dilemma brought about by her religious conviction. Her brother, Claudio, is due to be hanged, but Angelo, the Duke’s deputy, says he will spare her brother’s life if she will have sex with him. When she tells

Claudio that she isn’t going to have sex with Angelo, and that Claudio must therefore die, he is clearly upset. As a novice nun, Isabella’s attitude to religion is reasonably straightforward, but how about Angelo and Claudio? The actors need to know how their characters feel about religion before they can properly measure the depth of their own dilemmas.

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is driven by religious belief and it is essential for the cast to have a very clear idea of the prevailing attitudes to religion in the community at the time. It’s so specific that if the actors don’t have a shared understanding, the play simply won’t make sense.

Even if religion is not the main theme of a play or film, it is always worth considering how much it may or may not affect the characters.

• What do the characters consider to be right or wrong?

Different societies have their own customs, traditions and belief systems, and from these come particular moral codes which give people a formula on how to live their lives. Sometimes these can be quite shocking to people from other cultures. For instance, Muslim women are often totally shrouded in their burqas, whereas no one turns a hair about total nudity on some French beaches.

Actors need to have a clear understanding of the social conventions in the world of a play or film, but that doesn’t mean that each character will adhere to these conventions or even believe in them. Characters who have to stand up against the crowd and fight for their beliefs are often featured in plays and films. In An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, Dr Stockmann is denounced as a lunatic because he wants to close the financially rewarding spa baths because the water has been contaminated. Everyone turns against him, even his friends and allies. He famously says, ‘The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.’ Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront confronts the all-powerful union bosses against all odds. In the film Jaws, Sheriff Brody fights the whole community when he wants to close the tourist beaches of Amity Island after a shark attack.

It’s important to consider what would be thought of as morally right or morally wrong in the context of a play or film, and then to discuss what each of the individual characters would have felt about the prevailing moral codes. I suppose the point is: you don’t have to agree with the social and political beliefs, but you do have to understand them.

• What do the characters consider to be legal or illegal?

Crimes against other people, like murder and robbery, are illegal throughout the world, although the punishment varies. But it’s the laws of the land which try to impose moral values on the population that can be most diverse. The laws about alcohol and drugs, for instance. The laws about sex and gender. The marriage laws. The laws about slavery. In some countries it’s a capital offence to be caught drink-riving. You can be executed for it! In other countries bigamy is encouraged, while in Britain, of course, it’s forbidden. Each country makes its own set of moral laws. These are things that different cultures have very different ideas about and the actors should understand them and know whether their characters are for them or against them.

The film Milk is about the gay-rights campaigner Harvey Milk. Obviously the actors in that film had to have a very clear idea about the laws on homosexuality in America in the 1970s. They needed to know to what extent each of the characters might feel threatened. Homosexuality was made legal in Sweden in 1944, whereas in Ireland it wasn’t officially decriminalised until 1993, nearly fifty years later. The laws about gay marriage in America vary from state to state. It’s these laws, the ones that try to impose a ‘moral’ point of view on the population, that each actor needs to consider from their character’s perspective.

• What would the characters give their lives for?

I asked a group of actors what they themselves would give their lives for. The only American in the group said, ‘My country.’ None of the English actors said this. They said that they would give their lives for their children, or strong religious or moral beliefs. A lot of them said they wouldn’t give their lives for anything, and yet in some cultures people become suicide bombers for their beliefs.

But the real purpose of this question is for the actor to examine what their character would feel so strongly about that they would be prepared to sacrifice their very existence. This in itself will expose some deeply felt convictions, and it may reveal the inner passion of a character.

• How do the characters choose to act under pressure?

In his book Story, Robert McKee says, ‘The greatest desires have the greatest risks,’ and it’s those risks that reveal the depth of a character. Pressure can vary immensely. In High Noon, Gary Cooper plays a lawman who is just about to get married. When he hears that someone is coming to kill him, he asks the townsfolk for help but they turn their back on him. He has to face the killer alone on Main Street, fearing that he may make a widow of his bride before they are even married. Pressure. Othello has an epileptic fit in Act Four, Scene One of Shakespeare’s play, and eventually kills his wife Desdemona due to the pressure that Iago puts him under. In The Taming of the Shrew, Kate resists Petruchio’s constant pressure that she be a compliant wife for the whole of play, until she finally succumbs at the end of Act Five.

Of course, most of the characters in a play or film don’t have to respond to this sort of pressure, but if they did, how would they react? Would they fall apart or would they rise to the occasion? Would the pressure reveal something about them that they had never considered before? Would it change them for ever?