Excellent news: the half is yours! The director cherished your tape—stuffed with these concepts you used to face out from the pack and seize their consideration. However now that the contract is signed and the script is in your palms, the true work begins. How do you go about discovering your interpretation of a personality within the context of a bigger story, the performances of your co-stars and the director’s imaginative and prescient for the complete manufacturing? Is it a well known position, which carries its personal baggage and expectations? Or one thing recent begging in your private stamp?
Whether or not it’s an iconic position within the theatrical canon or a personality from a model new work, discovering your interpretation of a personality is an exhilarating process for an actor. It requires a substantial amount of analysis into the position and the story world, and rewards warning as a lot because it does daring, sudden decisions. No matter your interpretation could also be, it must be plausible throughout the context of the story; if the viewers doesn’t purchase your take, the artifice of your work will shine by means of.
On this article, we’ll take you step-by-step by means of the method of discovering your interpretation of a personality. However earlier than we do, allow us to kick issues off with some recommendation. Decoding a personality is by no means about you, the actor. You’ll be able to’t modify a job to go well with you as a result of it’s simpler, or tougher, or extra fascinating so that you can play. As an actor, your job is to serve the position and the story.
Set up the Information
All of it begins with the script. Your first step to find your interpretation of a personality is to determine firmly what’s already there on the web page and what the boundaries of your exploration of that character is likely to be. This comes from studying the script time and again, being attentive to what and the way it has been written. Solely then can you identify the query of why.
In our article on script evaluation, we define the method of unlocking the that means by carefully and punctiliously parsing every line—and every phrase inside that line—for potential that means. Maintain your eye on vocabulary and phrase alternative, punctuation, model; even the way in which a script is structured on the web page itself (though that is extra throughout the context of theatre than movie.)
No matter you discover there’s what the author meant. These are the info, buddies: the constructing blocks on which all information within the story world is created. For those who chip away at certainly one of them, you’ll finally invite the entire construction to crumble into rubble.
And take our phrase for it that working this manner with a script just isn’t as limiting because it sounds. Some actors reject this course of, fearing that their creativity will likely be stifled by a collection of guidelines and restrictions positioned by the author. Good actors, nonetheless, study to embrace the info—as a result of they perceive {that a} really impressed interpretation comes from filling the gaps in between.
Something the author didn’t specify is honest sport. And there’s all the time extra white than black on the web page.
Discover the Gaps
What sort of automobile does your character drive? When did they begin working their present job? Who was their greatest pal in highschool? How do they unwind after an extended day? What drove them to make a pun earlier than they threw that dangerous man off that zeppelin?
With the info stowed away, you can begin to ask the questions that inform your character’s actions and phrases—the questions not merely answered by what’s written within the script.
That is the place your interpretation of a personality will get fascinating. Though the info of a narrative won’t ever change, your solutions to the questions round these info is likely to be radically totally different to the following actor to say the very same phrases. What’s extra, contemplating these questions within the first place will can help you create a much more complicated, three-dimensional efficiency.
Say your character enters a scene by stepping out of a rain storm. That’s all the author offers you: “[CHARACTER] enters the [LOCATION] on a wet evening.” What questions would possibly you ask?
- Are they moist from the rain?
- If not, what saved them dry?
- Did they stash an umbrella exterior the door earlier than they got here in?
- Is the umbrella theirs, or did they take it from anyone else?
- In the event that they stole it, what does that say about their character?
And so forth. From a easy line on the high of a script, we are able to begin to paint an image of a personality ill-prepared, unscrupulous, presumably with thieving tendencies. Are we studying into this an excessive amount of? Maybe! However all of the sudden there’s much more to work with when crafting the previously-ambiguous second earlier than.
A Fast Notice: When Questions Turn out to be Information
When asking questions on a script, there’ll inevitably come a time when your ideas are answered by the reveal of data at a later level within the story. That is nothing to fret about, merely modify your interpretation to incorporate any new-found info.
The alternative could be true as properly. A personality’s much-reported private historical past could become a whole fabrication. Immediately, it’s good to return and re-examine all of the belongings you beforehand believed to be true. Enjoyable!
How A lot is Too A lot?
If discovering your interpretation of a personality is so simple as respecting the info and asking a complete heap of questions, how are you going to inform when to cease asking? How a lot is an excessive amount of with regards to sizzling takes and hypothesis? How far is simply too far?
It’s really essential to find the road between an interpretation that’s dynamic and completely excessive. It’s a wholesome boundary to push in your exploration of a personality or scene, as you typically discover essentially the most fascinating issues on this liminal house between insipid and impressed.
The trick is to think about your course of as experimentation: an opportunity to discover, think about and even fail. Nothing you attempt goes to work instantly; if it does, it’s in all probability price exploring a little bit additional past that time.
And when you’ve experimented? Study when to step issues again. This comes from expertise, from the suggestions of your friends and the steerage of your director on a manufacturing–who is certain to have opinions as to your character creation with an outsider’s eye. Test again in along with your interpretation of the script to see in case your decisions ‘match’ into the story world.
Do they really feel like they could possibly be a practical a part of that panorama?
Residing within the Story World
The most effective take a look at of your characterisation of a job is how properly they match throughout the story world. Attempt your interpretation out for a scene or two, and ask your self in what you’re doing feels constant and actual.
The story world is the ecosystem through which the narrative takes place: the dwelling, respiration house created by the author that grounds the story and makes it really feel plausible. Even when your character is a whole, one-of-a-kind, fish-out-of-water loner, they need to be a loner inside that specific context.
That is particularly essential if you’re growing smaller, bit-part chartacters. For audiences, small roles are custodians of the story world. They assist set up the ‘regular’ of the narrative, because the
