The Great & Powerful Why?
I recently saw a quote from Tony Robbins, the life coach extraordinare. He said:
“Having a powerful enough WHY will provide you with the necessary HOW”
Using transitive verbs in your work as an actor is an incredibly powerful technique, but the technique takes on even greater power when you couple it with a powerful enough why. However, I discovered 2 problems.
Not everyone understands the word as a verb as fully as they’d like to. WHAT?
Not everyone understands why they should use that particular verb. WHY?
Without these two, it’s impossible to develop a powerful HOW?
1. The first problem is easily resolved. Look it up in the dictionary, no worries, simply get a good strong definition for the particular version of the verb that you are meant to be doing. EVEN if you think you understand the word, look it up, it’s very helpful for describing the behaviour.
2. The second is a little more tricky. Why that tactic? We can say ‘to help me achieve my task/goal/want’ etc. Or we can say that we attack to make them feel attacked. But sometimes that’s not enough.
If you choose silence, what is your intended result? They completely shut the fuck up.
Why challenge? Because you want them to back up what they’ve been saying.
Why sting? Because you want them to feel a sharp smarting pain.
Why bait? Because you want them to feel provoked.
Why attack? Because you want them to feel vulnerable, weak, frightened, assaulted?
Why stroke? Because you can make them feel calm or reassured.
Why caress? Because you want to turn them on.
Why entertain? Because you want them to feel amused and distracted.
Why mock? Because you want the person to feel silly and embarrassed about something.
Why burst? Because you want them to feel deflated.
Why are you choosing to do that to them? What effect do you want the tactic/verb to have on the other actor?
The WHY is great and powerful and leads you directly to the HOW. Once we have thought about WHAT and WHY, the HOW takes care of itself. Look it up. Think about why. And the HOW should end with you landing the tactic directly onto the other actor(s) to change them. Actions/tactics/verbs are very useful for the actor – your whole performance is a string of actions. And those that don’t use them tend to play a set of states.
WHAT leads to WHY and WHY leads to HOW.