“Is belief a feeling?” I asked myself as I was writing out a new course description for one of my acting classes. Over the last many years, I have concluded that for acting in any medium, belief is perhaps the most powerful state from which to work from because it breeds confidence, playfulness, and spontaneity in performance. How many times has a director or coach suggested an actor “fully commit!” Of course, commitment isn’t a feeling, or something that be turned on with a switch. Certainly, I teach in my directing classes that directors are tasked with cultivating belief for their whole team on a scale from getting behind a large project goal to the helping an actor believe the smallest bit of stage business. But I’ve recently become concerned with finding out exactly what belief means for the student and how it can be fostered and used. What principles of language can we implement to generate belief? And furthermore, how can we make sure the language we use in the classroom and rehearsal is actively in pursuit of building belief?
We spend so much time meticulously getting into character – thinking, feeling, speaking, and moving as someone else – how much time and energy do you spend getting out of character?
Once again, I’m in rehearsal and there’s a delay as an actor stops midline and says, “Why do I say this? I just can’t wrap my head around it. What is the character’s motivation?” While the cast waits, the actor and director analyze beats, given circumstances, affective memories, and what-ifs.
I’ve been in the business of telling stories for the past 17 years, and in my capacity as a TV Director and Story Producer for documentaries and reality shows, it’s been my job to unearth and craft compelling stories through scripting and interviews with characters and contestants.
Every show is different and each one requires you to deal with your characters and storytelling in its own unique way. But what I’ve found revealing are the insights that I’ve picked up along the way, and the realisation that they also apply to life.
Acting is much more than just memorizing your lines. You really need to live, breathe, and understand your character. There are many resources out there to get you started analyzing your character and breaking it down. Here are just a few:
A playwright working on her own, honing a literal translation, may not be able to come to grips with the untranslatable, and may, consciously or not, stamp her own peculiarities upon the original. A translator working on his own may miss some of the intricate dramaturgical techniques employed by the original writer. Both may get so caught up in the intensity of working between languages that they forget that a script is only one layer of performance.
