New To Acting? This is for you!
The art of acting began about 600 years BC when an actor named Thespis (from which the definition “Thespian” comes) stepped out of the chorus and began playing characters. He used masks to delineate the characters and, for the first time, was not speaking as himself in a chorus commenting or narrating, but living as the character, someone other than himself.
For the next 2500 years, Classical acting evolved. The onstage behaviour was not necessarily naturalistic, conveying the play's message to the audience at a more or less believable level.
Then in the early Twentieth century in Russia, after much introspection and self analysis, Constantin Stanislavsky (Stage name) decided to overturn the approach to acting with the Stanislavsky method, aimed at a naturalistic form of acting designed for the creation of "living life" on stage, emphasizing the authentic, psychological, and emotional embodiment of a character rather than artificial presentation.
Acting technique was born and gave birth to many different schools of technique around the world. Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Jerzy Grotowski and many more teachers developed their own methods, all aiming for variations of one thing - “Living truthfully under given circumstances.”
This definition, from Sanford Meisner, is what acting training is all about. To find the truth in the behaviour of a performance, play or screenplay.
So how do we do this?
Technique
All of the practitioners mentioned previously take a different approach. Emotional memory, based on Stanislavsky’s early work, is the basis for Lee Strasberg’s method. Powerful imagination and deep research to build a character's world is at the heart of Stella Adler's school, and getting actors to have spontaneous, instinctual reactions to their scene partner in the present moment is at the centre of the Meisner technique.
There are many different approaches to acting, but the most important thing for any actor is to find what works for them.
Building Blocks
All techniques use certain building blocks which lead an actor to this truthful behaviour under their given circumstances, even if their approaches to them are different.
Objectives
An objective is what a character wants to achieve in a specific scene. It is the goal that drives all of their actions in that moment. A character may have a series of moment-to-moment objectives that lead to their larger "super objective", which is their main, overarching goal for the entire play or story (e.g., finding love, seeking security, protecting family).
For the actor: Identifying a clear, concrete objective is crucial for giving a realistic and engaging performance. The objective should be focused on another character (e.g., "I want Jim to tell me that he loves me" instead of "I want love") to create conflict and interaction.
You can have objectives for each moment, scenic objectives for each scene, and super objectives for the character.
Actions
Actions are the specific, physical things a character does to try to achieve their objective. They are the "how" of the performance.
For the actor: Actions should be specific, "actable" verbs that guide the actor's moment-to-moment performance, such as "to convince," "to threaten," "to comfort," or "to bribe". Choosing strong, active verbs helps an actor focus on their scene partner and avoid a "one-note" or passive performance.
As with Objectives, you can have beat actions (each moment) and scenic actions(The overriding action for a scene)
Intentions
Often used interchangeably with objectives, the intention can also refer to the immediate "why" behind an action or the specific quality or underlying meaning with which a line is delivered.
For the actor: Clarifying the intention (the "why") behind an objective helps create a three-dimensional character and determines how a line is said. The same line can be delivered in vastly different ways depending on whether the intention is "to hurt" or "to comfort".
Motivation
Motivation is the deeper, psychological reason why a character wants what they want. It can stem from their backstory or the literal story unfolding in the play, wounds, relationships, and fundamental psychological needs or desires.
For the actor: Understanding a character's motivation helps the actor justify their choices and actions, even if those actions seem strange to the actor personally. Motivation provides the emotional core that makes a character's actions believable to an audience.
Stakes
Stakes are what is at risk for the character if they fail to achieve their objective. High personal stakes add tension, urgency, and importance to the story, keeping the audience engaged.
For the actor: Considering the stakes helps the actor understand the urgency of the scene and the gravity of their character's pursuit. If a character is trying to get money, the stakes might be simply wanting a new car or, more dramatically, needing it to pay for life-saving surgery, which deeply affects the actor's performance.
Emotions
Stanislavski observed that emotions cannot be directly willed or forced in a consistent, truthful manner on stage.
By-products of Action: Emotions arise naturally and organically when an actor is fully engaged in pursuing a clear objective within the character's given circumstances. The actor doesn't play the emotion; they do the action, and the emotion follows.
Emotional Memory (Early Work): In his early system, Stanislavski used "emotional memory" (or "affective memory"), where actors would recall personal past experiences to generate genuine feelings. However, he later moved away from this as the primary method, finding it could be emotionally draining or unreliable, and emphasised the Method of Physical Action instead.
Truthfulness: The goal was always emotional truth and psychological realism, moving away from the artificiality and exaggerated expressions of the melodrama popular at the time.
An actor's training is a lifetime study, constantly evolving, finding what works for them. In classes, actors practice games, exercises, improvisations and scene work aimed at training certain behaviours and “being in the moment”, getting out of your own head, reacting to the given circumstances in a truthful, believable way.
An audience's preconception when they go to see a film, a play, or watch a television program, is that they are about to be told a story. They will continue to watch if they are kept wanting to know what happens next. This is the job of the whole production.
The actor's job in this is to behave truthfully under the given circumstances of the play. When they do this, they play their part in the audience's suspension of disbelief. When it is done less believably, the suspension is broken, and the audience becomes less interested.
Artistic Director / Acting Tutor - The Actors Class
