Character is Mental Clutter

One of the greatest disservices the acting world ever perpetrated on performers is making characterisation the actor’s responsibility.

Today on BAN (British Actors Network Facebook Group), an actor, excited and perhaps nervous about their first big role asked for help about playing that character. It was accompanied by a photo of ‘character notes’ from the production team, none of which could help at all.

All the helpful notes on characterisation are just clutter for your mind, a mind already full of competing self talk, reminders, direction, criticism, distraction, expectation and self doubt. They fill up the space in your head and negatively affect your performance.

Try this. The next time you go to the toilet and make a cup of tea, do it as a 40 year old self employed plumber with a love of PeriPeri sauce. The first thing that happens is that you become self conscious of how you are doing what you are doing and you critically observe the distance. Now you’re absorbed with yourself and self conscious about it.

You cannot act on information about the role. Characterisation is the job of the writer, they have either told us (through the actions of the character) about your character or they haven’t. And no amount of showing the audience things you know about the character will help make up for an absence on the writer’s part. Your job is simply to seem like that character.

Say this line like you are a half mad, paedophile in mourning for his father’s untimely death: “To be or not to be that is the question.”

While you’re trying to embody the half mad, sexually deviant prince, you’ll fill your head with just enough shite to stop you giving the performance you need to give – that of a man wrestling with a desire to take action against his murderous uncle, or kill himself. One is action, one is information and information clutters the mind, creating an obstacle between the thought and the action and impedes your innate ability to do.

Secure your lines so you don’t need to think of them. Discover an achievable goal for yourself from the script. Go into the scene like you would in your as-if and adapt to what the other person is doing. Clutter free.