The Emotional Trap

A really common poor habit that actors fall into is what I call the emotional trap. They’ve just been smart enough to identify a strong emotion within the scene or the monologue and they start there. And they get themselves in a one fixed emotional state.

Maybe it’s really intense, and maybe it’s high stakes, high drama and they’re feeling this emotion super strongly. Well, that might work for a few seconds, but very very quickly it gets boring. Because the audience sees that and says, “Okay, I get it, you’re upset. You’re feeling that emotion. Now what?”

We see this all the time in film and television acting from weaker actors. They just get into the scene or the monologue and all they do is just play one level of emotion the whole way through, usually at the same intensity. First of all, the intensity needs to vary because otherwise it’s boring. Secondly you don’t play the emotion, you play the thought, you play the tactic, you play the subtext that changes the other person in the scene/story you’re telling and that in itself should have different emotional attachments to it.

So don’t get stuck in an emotional rut. Be smarter, be more specific, concentrate on what you’re doing with the line. what’s your tactic, what’s your subtext? that will help you have specificity and not get stuck in an emotional trap.