The Art of Acting by David Carter

Author:David Carter [David Carter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781842434284
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2010-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Discovering Objectives

The matter of training will be considered later, but many actors have admitted that when they encounter some difficulties in developing a role they will resort to what they learned in their training, especially to what are known as objectives, which are basically the motivations of the character in the play. Penelope Wilton has said that she has found it useful to break down her script into objectives, asking herself questions such as: Why is she there? Where should she be? How should she do things? She adds: ‘Sometimes you know immediately and instinctively what to do, but if you have a problem, I think it’s a very good thing to fall back on, and say “What actually am I doing in this scene?”’ With maturity and experience she finds that she has to take such approaches less and less. Going back to a close study of the text is sufficient. When she encounters a problem, however, she reverts to asking herself what she is actually doing in a particular scene. Very often this means analysing the text again. She describes herself as very text-orientated, which she feels is typical of English actors, who learn to consider the text and good speaking of the text to be very important. She believes that the text is what differentiates the theatre from every other medium, which can do everything else much better. She retains the belief that theatre is in some way magical and that this magic resides in the words and the stories told.119

Margaret Tyzack, a highly accomplished and experienced actress, also finds the term ‘objective’ useful in describing how she prepares a role. She still turns to one old teacher and friend, Elizabeth Pursey, when she needs help: ‘She would say, “Never do something until you feel with every fibre of your being that it is the only way you could express what you want to do.”’ She had noted down once, in order to remind herself, the thought that an actor must ‘earn the right’ to speak his or her line. She believes that one should perceive the lines as being at the end of a process. The actor must find out what the character is seeking to achieve in every scene, indeed in every line, and narrow this down until it becomes so specific ‘that the lines written down are the only means of expressing it’. Another dictum she formulated for herself was ‘Not how you say it but why you say it.’120

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