Which ‘You’ Am I Talking To?

Some directors and teachers have their students/actors refer to themselves as the character.  It is considered a serious infringement if they speak about the character in the third person.  When the actor says ‘I’, they are referring to the fictional entity, and I believe this is intended to have the actor work with empathy for that character.

I, on the other hand, believe nothing of the sort. I do not believe that you need to refer to yourself as the character, ever.  In fact, we rarely even discuss the characters themselves in training or rehearsal, with a few exceptions.

We always speak about the character in the 3rd person, because we are acknowledging that we are NOT the character. We stand outside the character, so that we can objectively understand what’s happening in the scene, and we work our way inside, not through verbal identification, but through being ourselves, and acting under certain prescribed conditions.

But we never pretend, in any sense, not even verbally, that we are the character, because being made to speak as the character, ‘my father was killed by my uncle’, is a lie.  It’s a lie to ourselves, and a lie to each other, and finally it will end in a lie to the audience. Yes, the actor/student may guiltily comply, may say ‘I’, but they never actually mean it, in any sense.

So why do it? Because it’s part of an old fashioned tradition of ‘make believe’. We make-believe, and somehow, the truth of the character is revealed.  Save the kids games for the children.  Let’s treat actors like grown ups, shall we?

I do not teach actors to speak as the character ever.  Instead, they learn to understand the character’s needs, to pursue something like them in a moment to moment interaction with the other actor, at the same level of stakes (something to lose) as the scene.  When they speak the words of the text, they do so to achieve a result in the other person, always.

It’s all part of a traditional confusion that reigns in actor training, where actors end up feeling immensely guilty and confused, because they do not believe a word they are saying. They lie to the teacher/director, and go along with it, despite not believing any of it.

When you say ‘I’, you speak as yourself the actor, the only real person available to speak.  The moment you say ‘I’ and mean someone else, we all know that you do not mean it.