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The Actor’s Role in Play Production: Building a Character and Creating a Role
The Actor’s Role in Play Production: Building a Character and Creating a Role
By Ciji Guerin
Jacquelle Davis portrays a skeptical student in a play by Timothy Krause within the Northwest Theatre Workshop production of Detours.
It’s common to underestimate the amount of work an actor does to create a memorable character. Many believe that actors do no more than memorize lines and follow the staging set out by the director. But an actor’s process, especially in the theatre, is not so simple.
So, before we dive into the actor’s role in new play development, we first need to get our heads around what an actor does to create a memorable character on stage. Then, in our next article in this series, we’ll look at an actor’s role in new play development and reveal how the two roles differ.
In production, an actor is expected to build a character and create a role regardless of the state of the text. “Make it work” is the common expression of that expectation. But, just as with directors and dramaturges, the expectations of an actor in new play development differ from the expectations for productions. To effectively show the contrast, in this article we will focus on the actor’s role and process in a full production of an established script. Then, in our our next article, we’ll dive into an actor’s role and process in new play development.
In production, an actor’s job is to create a role. Like dramaturges and directors, most actors start their process with script analysis and continue to analytical explorations of text as they build their characters. A good script analysis process strengthens an actor’s choices and helps to create an original and potent character on stage. Of course, every individual actor’s artistic process is unique. In this article we’re outlining the general process our actors use to create the great characters they’ve played on our stages.
Goal During Script Analysis
Goal During Script Analysis
As with dramaturges and directors, the script analysis process for actors is rarely linear. Throughout the process, actors are often diving back into the text to get their heads around a new discovery, or to better understand an aspect of the character at the request of the director, or to rethink a choice not serving the overall arc of the character.
That said, actors usually perform their initial analysis prior to tablework, the analysis process lead by the director at the first rehearsal. Doing an analysis prior to the first rehearsal prepares actors to better discuss the script and collaborate with the cast and director, enabling them to make the most of their own interpretation of their roles while still fitting the director’s vision.
When actors begin their analysis, they tend to approach it differently than a dramaturg or director. Where a dramaturg is performing an in-depth study of the script’s dramatic composition and its theatrical representation, and the director is focused on developing the production concept, an actor’s analysis process is primarily concerned with a single character.
Analysis Process
Analysis Process
Actors usually start their analysis process by examining the overall narrative and how the structure and style of the text communicates its world, pacing and style. As they do, they pay equal attention to both dialogue and stage directions.
Stage Directions
Stage Directions
Stage directions in an established script are part notes from the prompt book of the play’s first production, and part hints and clues from the playwright about the character, story, themes, and how each scene should be played. As actors analyze a script, part of their job is to parse out which stage directions are from the prompt book and, therefore, should be ignored, and which are from the playwright and need to be deeply considered and integrated into the character.
As they work, they’ll take note of the playwright’s choice of words and punctuation, particularly those that relate to their own character. Every word choice and punctuation mark is the playwright’s way of communicating the character’s background, relationship with language, the social structure of the play’s world, the energy and pace of each scene, and the character’s acuity of mind and ability to process and react to discoveries and developments. Each verb stated in relation to a character hints at that character’s objectives and intentions.
Once actors achieve a grasp of the overall story, they often make a mental or literal list of the following:
Facts: Definitive information about the character directly stated in stage directions or dialogue
Questions: Questions arising from compiling the list of facts not answered directly by the script
Ambiguities: Moments in the script that need to be clarified by the actor’s character choices.
This process gives actors a stronger sense of the play’s context and strengths and sets them up to start working on defining the character’s given circumstances.
Given Circumstances
Given Circumstances
“The given circumstances” is a dramaturgical tool that actors use to develop their understanding of the play’s context. A common version of “the given circumstances” is Stanislavski’s seven questions:
Who am I?
Where am I?
What time is it?
What do I want?
Why do I want it?
How will I get what I want?
What must I overcome to get what I want?
Defining a character’s given circumstances reveals to actors that character’s particular situation. It sheds light on which aspects of the play’s world are affecting the character and influencing their trajectory through the story.
Beats
Beats
After discovering the character’s given circumstances for each scene, actors often begin “beat analysis.” Beats, like many terms in theatre, are often defined and used in different ways in different contexts.
For our purposes, beats are the smallest unit of action in a script. Beats are used by playwrights to organize their dialogue—sometimes intuitively, sometimes intentionally. Actors break down their scripts into beats to find the small shifts in their characters’ external and internal worlds.
Beats are often designated in scenes by a character entering or exiting a scene, a character achieving or failing to achieve an objective, a change in a character’s tactics, a switch in the character who is leading the action, or a change in the topic of conversation.
Beat analysis is an effective way for actors to find the dramatic tension in each scene, which empowers them with the knowledge of how to intensify that tension.
Objective, Obstacle, Intention, Motivation
Objective, Obstacle, Intention, Motivation
At this point, actors often seek to find their character’s objectives, obstacles, intentions, and motivations from beat to beat.
Quickly defining these four terms:
Objective: What does the character want?
Obstacle: What is stopping the character from getting what they want?
Intention: What does the character try to make happen so they can overcome their obstacles and get what they want? (Often referred to as the character’s plan.)
Motivation: Why does the character want what they want? Why do they do?
Finding the character’s objective, obstacle, intention, and motivation on the level of beat, scene, and story is key to an actor’s ability to build a character and create a role. These are what drive the character to make decisions, take action, and engage in the play’s overall narrative.
The character’s objectives, obstacles, and intentions from scene to scene are usually fairly easy to discern because, as the character performs the tactics and actions they think will get them what they want (intention), conflicts arise and obstacles are revealed.
A character’s motivation is a bit more difficult to discern. Motivation is only implied by the character’s objectives, intentions, tactics, and actions. But motivation is the driving force behind why a character wants what they want and behaves the way they do. It is vital for an actor to figure out motivation to create a rich inner life for the character and to understand how the character serves the play’s themes.
As actors begin to see their objectives, obstacles, intentions, and motivations at the beat-to-beat level, they start getting a stronger sense of the character’s overall arc.
Plotting Actions
Plotting Actions
After actors have a decent grasp of their objectives, obstacles, intentions, and motivations, they often begin plotting out individual character actions beat-to-beat, scene-to-scene.
It’s important to note here that actors are called “actors” because they are the “doers”—the “one who acts.” Motivating action is the heart of their work and the defining characteristic of theatre as an art form. The main purpose behind the analysis, exploration, and experimentation actors do during their creative process is to be able to bring a character to life in action.
As an actor works, they are looking to build one motivated action off the next—that’s how an actor builds a character’s arc. During this part of the process actors tend to discover the character’s relationships with their world and other characters. In order to understand each beat and make a strong choice in how to play it, an actor will often need to explore their character’s experiences in the world prior to the start of the play and their shared history, if any, with the other characters.
Of course, audiences rarely recognize the depth and rigor of an actor’s process. They only witness the nuances of their performance, the precision in their timing, and the unique and potent qualities of the character they bring to the stage. When the effort of actors in a production is grounded in a solid analysis process, they can indeed “make it work”—and the result can be standing ovations.
What’s Next
What’s Next
In our next article, we’ll venture into an actor’s role and process in new play development and how it differs from production. We’ll also continue our discussion on Fates, our real world example of a new play in development, and share how the actors’ feedback compared with the feedback from the resident playwright, dramaturg and director on that project.
Ciji Guerin
Ciji Guerin
Ciji Guerin is the Producing Artistic Director of Northwest Theatre Workshop (www.nwtw.org) and creator of their Create and Develop new play development programs. She has an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley. Over the last twenty years, she has worked on multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and traditional theatre projects as a dancer, actor, lyricist, playwright and director. Her work has been shown nationally at theatres such as REDCAT, The Kitchen, the Sarah Lieberman Theatre at Marin Theatre Company and locally at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Portland Theatre Works and Northwest Theatre Workshop (NWTW).
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