The Scene, the Scene, the Scene.

The only scene the actor needs to concern themselves with in performance, is the real human interaction between themselves and the other actors.  This real exchange, if connected via a thorough scene analysis to the actions of the character, will produce the illusion of the character for the audition.

Concerns with the scene, and how to play the scene, and how the scene should be played, are the concerns of control freaks and those with misplaced focus.  How do you know how a scene should be played? Because you have read it like an audience member sees a performance and created a version of the play in performance in your imagination, which you then attempt to match in real life.

The real scene is you and the other guys, and the interaction between you. But listen, it’s not quite as simple as that.  I’m not telling you to ‘just be yourself’.  I’m telling you that once you’ve done an analysis and understand the scenes in terms of action, then you have met the responsibilities to the author.

If you bring the right task to the scene, embodied through the right psychophysical actions (tactics), then you are meeting your responsibilities to the author, and bringing the scene to life.

When people ask ‘how do i play a psychopath?’, they misunderstand the nature of acting. It is not to play the psychopath, but to convert the action of the page into a real world interaction with the other actors.  All that nonsense research that actors do into real killers is just exercising/exorcising curiosity.  If my character is a psychopath, the important parts of that trait will make their way into the scene via the writer.  All your attempts to wink at the audience with clever ‘signs’ that your character is a psychopath are self-conscious and in the end false.

In the scene in which the psychopath buys a pack of cigarettes, your interaction with the cigarette vendor is not to show the psychopath, but to commit to achieve something like the character’s goal in real world form.

To show the audience that you are a psychopath by the way your character looks at the vendor, or by the way they pay the vendor, or the way that they look at the cigarettes, it’s fake work.

First, understand the scene, then translate the action of the scene into a real world interaction, commit to that interaction with your heart and soul and the audience sees the illusion of the character.

But at the end of the day, when all is said and done, the only scene you must concern yourself with, when it comes to the crunch, is the one between you and the other actor, the truth of that exchange will be more genuine, more honest and more believable than any fictional play-pretend moments you could possibly wish into being.

-COACH-