Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Acting (But Were Afraid To Ask, Dear) (7 page)

Three-act plays are a lot better without the second one, dear.

When an actor says ‘I’ve not got many lines, but I’m in a lot of scenes’, it means they look nice but aren’t very good.

Building a Character

Throughout your professional life – and at drama school – you will frequently be asked to think about your
character
. This does not mean thinking about your own personality, but is a challenge to work on the role that you are playing. There are many workshops out there that claim to help with this mystical and challenging art form – some are good, some are bad, and some are very ugly indeed.

I have been lucky enough to spend lots of Dom-filled evenings with many directors. And whilst I generally try to avoid talking about work, invariably we end up in long discussions about it. Only last week I was discussing ‘character work’ with a very well-known director. He shared the following thoughts with me before vomiting on my Mister Mistoffelees rug.

One of the best ways of learning about your character is by reading the script and discovering what your character says. If your character says nothing then chances are you are a mute or a mime artist. If this is the case then you will have a nice easy rehearsal period. If you are a central character in the script you will have lots of dialogue – and in all of this dialogue there will be lots of hints about your character. However, I do realise that this kind of research is hard – particularly for those actors that cannot read. In those instances I recommend asking your mummy to do it for you.

Some people, like David Mamet, are of the belief that you should simply say the lines and the character will appear. By this he means that the writer has already created the character, and the actor’s job is just to deliver the dialogue. This is an interesting idea, but is no use at all if you are playing an animal that just barks. This is where ‘animal studies’ can prove very useful.

If you are playing an animal then you should go and study that animal. If you’ve been to drama school you will undoubtedly have done an ‘animal studies’ term – where you all smell each other and pretend to be Doctor Dolittle. As I’m
sure you’re aware, animal studies is not just a case of sitting down and copying the animal – you have to get inside the ‘animal’s head’. You have to think like the animal, behave like the animal, and procreate like the animal. There was a production of
The Wind in the Willows
in the late seventies where the entire cast lived on a river for a month. It was great for their characters, and they all really understood their animals, but the show had to be completely recast as they all contracted Weil’s disease.

You may also find animals useful in informing the human character you are playing. For example, imagine what kind of animal your character is – and use the animal to aid your choices about the mannerisms, physicality and vocal qualities of your character. What kind of an animal do you imagine Hamlet to be? Is he a dog, a giraffe, a humpback whale? For my money he’s something like a Golden Retriever – an animal that is quiet, loyal, pensive, and nice to stroke. However, I have seen some productions of Hamlet where the actor playing him obviously thought he was an elephant as he plodded, shouted, dribbled, got on all fours, and even got his trunk out. But I suppose that serves me right for going to an after-midnight version of
Hamlet
at the Edinburgh Festival, dear.

Actors like Daniel Day-Lewis believe they should constantly be
in character
– and insist on being in character off-set as well as on. This is fine if you are living near the set and the whole cast and crew are aware of it. It does, however, get a little more complicated when you are starring in a musical and randomly burst into song during your weekly shop at Tesco. Of course, there is nothing to stop you attempting this method – but always remember that police will not accept ‘I was in character’ as a valid excuse for stealing a MacBook Pro.

Personally, I think one of the most effective ways of building a character is by purchasing a DVD of the film or stage version of the show that your character is from (or go and watch it at the theatre if it is already on). This is particularly
useful when taking over a role in a cast change as it saves my resident director days of valuable rehearsal time. Of course, in Stanislavsky’s time this option wasn’t available, but if he were around today I’m sure he would applaud this instinctive method. Copying is the highest form of flattery – and if another artist has already tackled the role then there is no reason why you shouldn’t use his version as a guide. I wouldn’t suggest copying the entire performance – purely for legal reasons – but if you wear some glasses and a beard to make yourself look different then you should be fine.

Actors – never disagree with your director. Just agree and then forget, dear.

Acting in a Serious Play

A serious play will often have a sofa, a drinks cabinet, a large space in the middle in which actors are allowed to walk and talk, and an ashtray. This setting is the default for many serious plays – as it allows lots of random lounging, perching, walking in the middle, stirring of liquids, and contemplative cigarette-smoking.