The Actor’s Task

We have all heard of the acting term ‘objective’. We have also heard actors derided as ‘luvvies’ for wanting to understand their character’s motivation.

But intention is very important. Understanding not only what the character’s intention is, but how to translate that into action is very important for the actor. It’s essential.

Action and intention meet together in The Task. This is the better interpretation of the Russian word zadacha, which gave us the horribly clinical term ‘objective’ when translated by Hapgood, Staniskavski’s original translator.

These terms are used freely along with want, desire, intention, goal and action. However let me be clear about what I mean by Task. I mean what the actor will do, to fully occupy them during each moment of the scene. This is where the character’s goal is translated into something simply do-able by the actor, the doing provides the action and when added to the intention we get a task. Character’s intention translated into something do-able by the actor.

The task must not be ‘performed’. That’s the death of your acting. The task must be lived truthfully. In other words, actually make the real attempt to achieve it.

Action is what you do. But sometimes that is made up of simple little activities. Activities are little bits of doing, but never confuse the two, action infused with intention is always psychophysical. However, you can just walk down a corridor to get to someone’s office, which is just an activity.

As actors on stage or screen, we cannot actually let anything we do be a plain activity, because it creates a stilted moment when the actor gives too much attention to the mechanics of handing their co-star a glass and they become clumsy instead of focusing on the larger task and allowing the moment with the glass to be influenced by it.

If you like the blogs, consider moving to Scotland, it’s beautiful! Lol.