In Actor and Text class we have learnt a variety of skills to develop in working on scripts by breaking them down. We worked on different techniques that would help us do this and to understand the characters we would be playing or even creating as some of the plays we said had little information about the context of the play or of the scene. I will talk about two plays we did in class: ‘The Bear’ by Anton Chekov and ‘Love and Information’ by Carol Churchill. I also worked independently on The River by Jez Butterworth.
The first technique we covered was Events, which is something that advances the plot. I really struggled to understand Events because I could not figure out when the new events were. I have some knowledge of this now from practicing but still struggle at times. I now know that when there is a scene change, a change of energy in the characters, or when there is something new that happens in the scene, these would all be classed as events. We did this with the play “The Bear,” which did not have many changes of Events until the character Smirnov arrives. When he arrived, there was a change in overall pace, which meant more changes in energy from characters. I would say this technique is useful, but it is hard to find when and where the Events would be. I would say that I need to learn more about Events before I put them into place.
Another technique we covered was Tactics. This is when the character is saying something in the script which can be compared to an action – for example, to bully. As opposed to Events, I understood how to figure out the action the character was doing. To pick the actions I used the book Actions: the actors’ thesaurus (Calderone, 2004). I worked on the character Luka from the play ‘The Bear.’ The exercise for this technique was to say the Tactic like a ‘spell’ and think of a word that would show what the character is feeling whilst saying the line. For example, we said “I [something] you” before the line, where the ‘something’ would be the action word. I picked three spells for three different lines; I chose the spells “I implore you,” “I reassure you,” and “I bludgeon you.” I enjoyed this exercise because I was the only person to play the character Luka, so it meant that I could change the way I said the line and spell. We then did another exercise later with a different play ‘Love and Information’ where we had to repeat a line with different emotions to see what fit best. I chose angry, loving, and frustrated. I felt like these three really suited what was going on in the scene. I also went back to the spells and chose ‘I provoke you’ and ‘I want you.’ I like the ‘spell’ method as I can physically see and hear how just a word can affect the character’s emotion, which helps me better understand a scene. I will be using this method to work on my character’s tactics during scenes and script work in the future.
The next technique was Objectives and Super Objectives. These techniques are similar as both involve the character’s wants and goals and how to achieve them. They are also different as Objectives consider what the character wants in a particular scene or Event, whereas a Super Objective is a character’s overarching goal. Generally, Objectives will contribute to Super Objectives. For example, in ‘The Bear’ the character Popova at the beginning of the play has the objective to mourn her deceased husband. This is until a man called Smirnov comes to the house, which changes her Objective to ‘get Smirnov to leave the house.’ Similarly, for the character Luka his Super Objective is to get Popova to leave the house and to live a happy life.
Another technique is Given Circumstances. This technique originated from the practitioner Stanislavski; he wanted to make sure that the actors delved deeper into the characters to make sure they had a clearer mind on how to portray them. Given Circumstance should be shown at the beginning of the play as it tells you about the context of the play/characters. The context could tell you the Given Circumstance of a character which is information about the character. For instance, they could have a wheelchair. In ‘The Bear,’ we received a small introduction to the characters.
This short context gives us that Luka is an elderly man who works for Popova. Following this, we would have to either find more Given Circumstances in the play or work solely with this information. With Given Circumstances you can make up your own if the director allows it, which can change the way the character is portrayed on stage. In ‘Love and Information’ we had nothing to help us. There was no context or character names, it was just blank. This meant that we had to create the Given Circumstances ourselves.
When looking at Given Circumstances I really enjoy the quote from Stanislavski “One must love art, and not one’s self in art”. (Stanislavski, 1962 p298) This quote is useful to make sure that you are being mindful about being one with the art and making sure to check back in with yourself. The Stanislavski method was classed as method acting which can be seen as very realistic as the actor embodies the character. (Lane, 2023) Method Acting must be balanced – some actors have been known to take it too far. For example, Jared Leto sent the cast of The Suicide Squad a dead pig. (Shepherd, 2016) Breaking down a character was what I enjoyed the most in these classes as it allowed me to be free to develop the context or create the scene myself.
Hot Seating is also a technique we used. This is when you ask questions to someone who is in the ‘hot seat’ and they must answer in character, and then you switch over. This exercise is an improvisational task where you must answer all questions on the spot. These questions could be standard, like ‘what is your favourite colour?’ or they could be more bizarre like ‘if you could be an animal, what would you be?’ I have to say that I have a love and hate relationship with the hot seating technique because I enjoy asking the questions and thinking of ways I can make them think hard about their character. I also love creating characters while answering questions, however I do feel the pressure while in the hot seat. With this technique, it is important to stay cohesive with what you create; your answers to questions cannot contradict each other. I think I will always try to use this method as it is helpful to understand your character, but it is easy to get distracted and go off on tangents; in future, I may set a time limit so I can work on what has been said. This is an image of me and someone going through the hot seating technique before using the scripts.
Another way to help us break down a character is Character Profiling. I find this method like the hot seating method because they both build a character but with this method, you are creating it for yourself and asking the questions yourself too. With this method I found it easy to pick points of interest and background facts about the character. For example, I found it easy to write about the history of the family with this character. I thought of questions to ask myself like “does this character have a dream or life ambition.” While you can ask these questions in a hot seating session, you can think about it more deeply with reference to the character, so you have a clearer idea of what and who they are.
A way I like to help create the character is by making them a Music Playlist. This will include the songs they would listen to and how they would react to certain songs. Doing this can also help you get into the character before performing as it can get you into their mindset. The only problem is with this method is that sometimes you can miss the whole concept as you could potentially add songs you like and think “sure, the character would like that” just so that you can listen to the songs you want to listen to. Unfortunately, this would just change the way you would see the character and wouldn’t help get into their mindset as you would be mimicking yourself. If I were to use this method, I would ensure I create the Playlist whilst fully getting into the character to receive the full benefit of it.
I wanted to give these techniques a go by picking a play myself and trying to dive deeper with the characters. I picked a play called ‘The River’ by Jez Butterworth. I picked this play as it had a remarkably interesting structure to it that I wanted to explore deeper. I also liked the play as it has only three characters, like ‘The Bear.’ However, in this play, the characters have no names and no specific context about them. The names are written as ‘The Man,’ ‘The Woman,’ and ‘The Other Woman.’ The only other information I was given was the setting – ‘The cabin on the cliffs, above the river.’ I really liked the idea that I could use this as a trial-and-error situation where I can create a character profile on the specific characters. Before I created the context, I wanted to research the play more just in case there was information that they had given prior to me adding more but there was not much about it the only thing it mentioned was that the man likes fishing and the women could be all in his head. (Aspen, 2016) I got a section of the script and used the same book I used to find the Tactic words for the ‘spells’ and tried picking them apart to see if I can do that too.
I really enjoyed putting all the things I learnt in these lessons together on my own as I am preparing to do this for the future. I liked the challenge of creating a story which I can see myself doing for a lot of other plays like this.
Overall, I can see myself using these techniques and working on them in diverse ways during this course. For example, I have started a song in my Acting Through Song class and I liked the idea of figuring out where the tactics potentially change and where the objectives change too. Below is a picture of a page in a song where I was working out where the changes were so I can resonate more with my character. In my Acting Movement class, we are working on Laban efforts which I have also tried to incorporate with this class. We have been working on a monologue of our choice and placing a Laban effort into it. Alongside this, I have incorporated the techniques I have discussed here to further improve my performance.
I think before I started this class, I did not entirely know how to annotate scripts to this degree as previously I only used to say what the character might have felt in the scene; I can now work out what the character means on a deeper level with every sentence they say. I can work out when the changes are. Overall, it has helped me, and I will continue to use these techniques with every script I see and read wherever appropriate.
Calderone, M. (2004) Actions: The actors’ thesaurus. Nick Hern Books.
Stanislavski, C. (1962) My life in art. London: Geoffrey Bles.
Lane, J. (2023) Given circumstances in acting: Definition, examples, and exercises, Backstage. Available at: https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/given-circumstances-acting-explained-76219/ (Accessed: 06 January 2025).
Shepherd, J. (2016) Jared Leto sent a dead pig to the rest of the Suicide Squad cast, The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/suicide-squad-jared-leto-had-a-dead-pig-sent-to-the-cast-because-he-is-the-joker-a6887276.html (Accessed: 06 January 2025).
Aspen, M. (2016) Streams of complexity: The river, Mark Aspen. Available at: https://markaspen.com/2016/05/18/streams-of-complexity-the-river/ (Accessed: 06 January 2025).
