Archives for posts with tag: script

Onions Part 9

September 15, 2013 //
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This will be the last in this series of articles. We’ll wrap up with a couple more personality disorders and discuss how to use some of what I’ve written about.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is not the same as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD is more severe and, among other symptoms, involves repetitive, ritualistic behaviors and persistent, worrisome thoughts. The personality disorder is manifested by rigid conformity to rules. They need everything to be perfect and feel that unless they’re in control, things will not go well. Poor roommate material.

The avoidant personality disorder is basically a really bad case of shyness. They feel inhibited in any kind of social situation and are easily hurt by criticism. Don’t sneak up on them and yell, “I hate your shoes!”

If you run through a mental list of people you know, you’re likely to believe some of them have one of these disorders. You may even see a little of yourself in one of them. But don’t self-diagnose because you’ll probably be wrong. And please, unless you happen to be a board certified psychologist, don’t ever label other people with any disorder or other psychological profile and then share your thoughts with others. That’s a seriously bad idea. None of these articles should be interpreted as scientifically accurate absolutes. I’m not a psychologist; I’m an actor and acting coach and these are tools I’ve used to help ignite a creative approach to development of a character.

At the beginning of this series I compared a human personality to an onion because viewing a personality that way makes it easier to construct a new one. At the very center of our own personalities are those things we keep secret, sometimes even from ourselves. Those secrets that we are aware of, but don’t want others to know about (fatal flaws) are the secrets that we’ll carefully guard at almost any cost. That’s the best place to start with your new character’s personality. Those secrets may be in the script’s text or you may have to invent them. They give you something internal to work against and clues to behavioral characteristics. For example, let’s suppose your character harbors a secret, conscious urge to murder people. His/her superego is doing a good job of keeping that urge in check so nobody is actually getting killed. But, that doesn’t stop the urge. Certainly he/she doesn’t want anyone to know about that secret. And good old ego knows that when it comes to the character’s long-term interests, being seen by others as a potential killer is probably not helpful! So, move out to the next layer and review ego defense mechanisms. How is this character going to guard against that secret and protect him/herself from its negative consequences? Deny, suppress or create a reaction formation around it? Find the mechanism that is the best fit for you, the actor. Sometimes, others can tell when someone is in denial. Other defense mechanisms might not be as obvious. The key for you is to enhance your sense of who your character is. That enhancement will offer up some very interesting choices for every facet of your character’s personality.

How about a personality disorder? Those are the outer layers that present a lot of non-verbal opportunities. For example, it may not be in your script but perhaps you decide to play with the idea of your character being obsessive-compulsive. There might be a moment where you can rearrange props on a table to be just so. Then, if another actor handles the one of those props and doesn’t return it to exactly the right place, you make a point of re-setting it the way you want it. If one of the props gets handled and misplaced still one more time, you have a golden comedic moment in the making.

Another big advantage to shaping the psychology of your character is the audience gets to know the character on a deeper level. Psychological characteristics are instinctively sensed. This makes your character predictable on a subliminal level. That predictability is powerful stuff in a performance because audience members will learn to expect certain characteristics from your character. In comedy, that can turn just a beat of silence before reacting to a stimulus, into a hilarious moment as the audience says to themselves, “Oh, boy. Here it comes,” and then laugh that much more when their prediction of your character’s reaction comes true. In drama it can be effective in similar fashion especially with the added bonus of pushing against the predictability. A passive and dependent character that suddenly becomes violent and murderous in the last act can shock an audience even more if you have internalized its urge to violence and exhibit behavior that guards against its discovery.

Creating a believable character means inventing a new personality, discarding your personality and becoming completely immersed in the new one. Knowing how personality traits affect behavior will provide you with a better foundation for a character and expose you to better and more effective choices.

Break a leg.

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Categories Acting

Grounded

April 18, 2013 //
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Leslie Nipkow is an amazing talent. Her stage presence and believability are seamless. Lucky me, she was one of my scene partners in Wynn Handman’s class. Her work elevates the work of anyone fortunate enough to share the stage with her. You know that feeling you get after a performance in which everything clicked for you? You spent the entire show in “the zone?” That was how I felt every time Leslie and I worked on a scene together. What a buzz that is!

I had an audition for the Actor’s Studio and Leslie generously agreed to partner up with me. We had decided on a scene from Dylan by Sidney Michaels. We had spent weeks on it for class and it worked very well for us. The scene is between Dylan Thomas and his wife, Caitlin. They had a tumultuous relationship on one level and a deep, mutual love on another. The scene we did shows both of those levels along with a significant emotional arc for both characters. It’s a great and challenging piece.

To get to the performance space at the Actor’s Studio we had to go up a set of narrow stairs and wait just outside a door for the call to go. While we were waiting I noticed Leslie had her arms extended and was pushing herself back and forth by pressing her open palms on the opposing walls of the stairwell. She was doing this at a pretty brisk pace and I was afraid she might fall down the stairs. But I knew Leslie well enough to keep my mouth shut.

After the audition, which went really well, I asked her why she had done that back and forth business on the stairs. “Because Caitlin is trapped,” she said. Simple enough, right? But the fact was, she had landed on a subtext for Caitlin and found a way to express it physically right on the spot. Waiting on those stairs she had discovered and, right up until the last second used, a focus mechanism that grounded her in Caitlin’s reality and exploited it.

What’s my point? Leslie could have skipped that step and still delivered a remarkable performance because that’s how talented she is. But she wasn’t about to give less than 100 percent of everything she knew and everything she had learned, no matter what. That’s what lifts her from ‘talented’ to ‘unbelievably amazing.’

Finding a way to “kick open the door” to a character’s mindset and world and using it consistently for every performance is one of those basics that we too often ignore. After working at our craft for a long time it’s easy to stop feeling the need for such things. I know I’m guilty of it, just hanging out in the green room until a few lines before the first entrance.

Sorry, Leslie. I’ve got to fix that.

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Categories Acting, Teaching

An Actor’s Path

April 14, 2013 //
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This video speaks a lot of truth to everyone, especially actors and other artists. Take a moment and watch it.

That video is brilliant and everyone should see it. Better yet, everyone should live it.

It brought back a very fond memory. I was in Wynn Handman’s class in the mid-nineties. (If you’ve never heard of Wynn, Google his name. He’s one of the great gifts to American theatre.) In Wynn’s class you worked on whatever you wanted to work on. A monologue, one-person show, whatever. Or, if you had nothing specific in mind, Wynn would pair you off with another student and give you a scene to work on. He assigned a scene from Beyond the Horizon to a male/female pair of students.

Beyond the Horizon was Eugene O’Niell’s first full-length play. Written in 1920, it’s a story about two men in love with the same woman and the personal compromises each is willing to make to win her over.

The actors did their first read through in front of class. After the read through, Wynn got up and made his comments and gave his notes. He started by telling us that O’Niell’s play was a uniquely American tragedy. He then explained what constituted an American tragedy. One of the most profound facets of American life is the freedom to choose the life we want to live. In 1920 that choice was not and, in some cases, is still not available in many of the world’s other cultures. In those places, from the time one is born their life is mapped out for them: where they will live, how they will earn a living and even whom they will marry. But as Americans we have the freedom to make our own, individual life choices and follow dreams no matter how crazy they may seem to others. We can choose the path we want for our lives and even change paths if we want to. An American tragedy results when someone makes the wrong choice. Wynn closed those remarks by saying to the class, “And here’s to all of you talented people for choosing the right path!”

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Categories Acting, Teaching, Theatre

First Looks

April 12, 2013 //
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What’s your first step when it comes to building a character, especially for a role you’ve never played before? What’s the first thing you do when you pick up a script for the first time? Do you read through the entire play from cover to cover or do you flip through to find your scenes before reading anything else? I would guess most of us zero in on our scenes out of curiosity if nothing else. When you’ve finished looking over your scenes, then what? Is that when you read through the entire script?

I doubt very much if I’m the only one who does this but here’s what I do. I go to my scenes, first and immediately start making choices and jotting down notes. Once I’ve done that with all of my scenes, I go back and do it again. And again. I’ll even start learning my lines before I read the whole script. Crazy, I know. There’s a whole lot of information in the rest of the play that is bound to inform my character choices so I really should work within the context of the story. But frequently I’ve found I make my strongest choices that way. I never allow myself to become totally committed to these early impulses because I know they’re going to be shaded or changed during rehearsals. It’s surprising, though, how often I’ve ended up returning to those first ideas and using them in performance. Here’s my reasoning behind the idea:

In real life, by the time we’ve reached adolescence, our personalities are pretty well set. The basic wiring in our brains isn’t going to fundamentally change all that much. We’ll learn new things, become wiser and our interests will change and mature but we’ll still perceive the world around us and interact with it in basically the same ways. If one is shy at the age of sixteen, odds are that he/she will still be shy at the age of thirty. How he/she deals with shyness will evolve over time but the fact of foundational shyness will stay (I learned all that stuff working in a psychiatric outpatient clinic for three years). Since as actors we’re in the business of inventing new people and personalities, can’t we come closer to the character’s truth by shaping the personality outside of the circumstances of the play?

I’m not the type of guy who produces profound revelations so others must work this way, too.

What about you? Please share your thoughts. Thanks!

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Categories Acting