No Character Necessary
When asked why they like acting, many people reply that they enjoy becoming someone else, walking in someone else’s shoes, transformation.
The problem is that no one has ever actually transformed, become someone else, or walked in someone else’s shoes – they simply aren’t actually possible. That’s not my opinion, that’s a fact. And no matter what famous successful actors say they doing, they are not actually transforming.
Something else is going on.
It’s a self-delusion. It’s an enjoyable one. For certain actors, the delusion seems to lead to good performances, but for most, it leads to greater self-consciousness. Is that weird? Trying to ‘become’ someone else, makes them even more aware of self in a negative way that impedes performance.
The real problem is that this character delusion is such an accepted and established practise in acting tradition, that most daren’t question it.
And so from role to role in productions in school, college, drama school, conservatory, amateur, professional theatre, film and television all over the world, actors are attempting to do something impossible and feeling very guilty that they’ve never experienced even a few moments ‘in character’.
Character is not the job of the actor. The writer has done that job. And if they haven’t why the hell is that script being made? Absence of plot won’t be helped by abundance of self-indulgent character work.
Character is the job of the writer, but our obsession with actors transformation has created a very strange contradiction.
Actors are trained in characterisation. Directors talk characterisation. The public is obsessed with the lengths that actors will go for transformation.
But no one is actually doing it. Take a look on Amazon, there are tons of books dedicated to this topic. Something that is actually impossible.
And actors know it. But because we are often the bottom of the food chain, we don’t dare question it aloud.
Characterisation isn’t how character is produced.
Character is produced at the meeting point between the psychologically endowed actions of the actor, the material provided by the writer and the imagination of the audience.
But we like the idea of transformation, and the stories of all those clever flourishes that such and such a big name actor brought to their role in the name of character.
Character isn’t a job one does over there and then imports it into the scene. It is produced at the moment of performance. Until then, it’s just good intentions.
So I have one question. Why bother? Just because it’s fun? That’s not art, that’s self-indulgence.
When you are liberated from the need to bother with character and characterisation, you can focus on the important things.
Understanding the Scene. Embodying the Psychological Drive of the Character. Really listening to the other people in the scene and adapting what you do to what they do. Have fun.
No character necessary.