TRUE STORY – What the man in the street told me about acting

Man in the street told me that the definition of an actor was the ability to become someone else. Man in the street wished he hadn’t brought up this topic with me… TRUE STORY.

Who told you that characterisation was your job? Who told you? I’m serious! Who told you that? I was thinking about this a great deal recently. I mean, someone told you, somehow you’ve taken it as an unassailable given that characterisation is your job, your role, and your responsibility.

I say it’s not and thankfully I’m not the only one. David Mamet suggests that characterisation is the role of the writer and not the actor and I’ll tell you why I think he’s right. Because all the stuff we’re taught as characterisation exercises and techniques boils down to ‘helping’ the play. It’s as if through the act of a putting on a funny voice, or changing our gait, it will sufficiently convey to the audience that we are indeed someone else.

But they came to the cinema or the theatre WANTING to believe we’re someone else, they willing offer us the suspension of their disbelief. And it seems as if then labouring them with our efforts as ‘characterisation’ is just a mere slap in the chops. We help them imagine by painting them a picture – on top of the one they’re creating. Imagine if the musician did this. I will play Chopin for you, but I’ll also tell you how to feel, what to think and I’ll do some drawings for you at the same time to help you enjoy it. Shut up and play the damn piano!

It’s also patronising to the audience. It’s as if their imagination isn’t sufficient that we need to provide some kind of additional ‘help’ for them too. But what can we really do? We cannot change our own nature, we cannot become the character, we can only be ourselves, we can only ever be ourselves.

But what of those that came to acting because they want to escape themselves? Those that feel buoyed by the act and art of transformation. I suggest they try therapy as a less expensive way to resolve whatever they don’t like about themselves. As Macy is fond of saying – “No one ever came to acting from a happy childhood”, we’re all in it to please and we can’t escape ourselves. Ever.

So much time is wasted on characterisation in school and in rehearsal, and hours of fake work has only convinced me that it doesn’t change a damn thing. It wastes time and distracts us from the real job – the which is to tell the story of the play/screenplay for the audience’s entertainment, to tell it simply so that we don’t get in the way of a worthy script from a good writer.

But as Bella Merlin once queried, what if the writer isn’t up to much, what if he isn’t as good as many – it’s easy to rest on good writing if your acting teacher won the Pulitzer for drama, what if the writer is rubbish. Couldn’t the actor step in to help? Well, a couple of things. Firstly, why are you involved with such substandard material, you know it’s going to end badly. I must earn my living is the usual answer, okay, but don’t expect good reviews.

If the play isn’t up to much, you can’t save it with characterisation. It’s as if an absence of story or weak dialogue could be made up for with an abundance of character. Trust me, I don’t care what kind of person Andy Murray is, if he can’t win a Grand Slam, I don’t care about his character.

At the end of the day, characterisation is something someone made up in the mistaken belief that this was part of the actor’s job and that to bring truth to the stage, you had to create a truthful character.

But please hear this. You are a truthful character already and whatever you do on stage, if you do it with truth will be received by the audience as just that – the truthful actions of the character. For why would they mis-believe you? They came to be fooled, they offer you their complicity when they pay their money and sit quietly in the dark. They don’t sit there with their arms folded saying “go on then, convince me you’re someone else.”