Playing The Part, Not The Result

Many actors throughout their careers will at some point need to perform an emotional scene. Whether it is someone experiencing a devasting blow or the happiest day of their character's life, most actors see what actions are written into the stage directions and immediately try to play the result of those emotions. For example, if someone sees the words, "She jumps up and down in excitement," that actor may jump up and down with a smile on their face, but if she doesn’t understand why she is doing such an action, she likely is attempting to “look like” she’s excited, rather than experiencing true happiness. This is what we call 'playing a feeling’, ‘indicating an emotion’ or ‘playing a result'. Although this actor may have performed what was asked of them in the scene, the performance likely seems superficial, forced, or generally like it's missing something from an audience's perspective—the opposite of an honest performance. When we only try to play the feeling or the result of an interaction, we as an audience miss out on the complexity and authenticity of how we genuinely feel and experience emotion in everyday life.

We as actors ultimately need to grasp why and how we instinctually feel certain emotions at specific points in our lives, while also understanding that not everyone expresses their feelings in the same manner. Our actions define a person's literal character: part of our homework is to understand what motivates us to operate in a certain way and then react to our imaginary circumstances.

Consider for a moment the intention for why stage directions exist in the script in the first place. When the script is originally being written by the screenwriter or the playwright, they are writing it with the final image in mind. It’s intended for the production team to understand what needs to be occurring on-screen or on-stage in each moment. The key words here are “final image”. Although some writers have an understanding of what work is involved in the preparation phase for actors, the vast majority are NOT thinking about what the actor must do and are solely focused on telling a good story (as they should!). If a writer puts into the script “she cries”, that is what is expected to be visually seen.

Scripts are a lot like schematics for a constructing a building. Everyone receives the same blueprint for how the house may be developed, but the quality of the materials used to build the house will vary from architect to architect. Some materials are built for longevity, while other materials are not as valuable over an extended period of time. Usually, the buildings created with quality materials have the strongest foundation and can literally weather the storm.

Scene work functions essentially in the same manner. Although two actors may receive the same scripts with the same set of directions, the choices they have made in the preparation phase will ultimately affect the quality of their final performance. If two actors both read the stage directions that says “she cries softly” and only one of them chooses to look into the details for what motivated her to cry--- the other actor’s performance will pale in comparison. In this example, it is not enough to only ‘look like’ you are crying, you must genuinely experience that emotion as well. The honestly felt and fully-developed scenes are the quality foundations we are striving for in all of our work as actors. There are far too many performers who are well-intentioned and want to start working on their scripts immediately, but their expedited work affects the vital subtilities necessary to make a scene meaningful and authentic. They gloss over the important specifics of what is motivating a character throughout the script and the details that cause a character to react emotionally.

In real life, we build-up to a feeling with a series of events that lead to an explosion of emotion that seems to all come out at once. In scene work, we must build up to this same emotional reality. For instance, the thought process for someone who may have had a pet pass suddenly usually begins with the realization that something is wrong, which builds into seeing if their pet may be saved, and then the sudden grief and acceptance that their pet has passed.

Once this person has noticed that their beloved pet is officially gone, their response may be determined by their personality. This person may simply be crying from an outside perspective, but there are several reasons for why this person may have had this response. They may be relieved that their pet is no longer in pain. They may be angry that the ending was so fast and they weren’t granted proper closure. They may be thinking about all of the happy times they had with them. They could also be running through thoughts of everything they could have been done to save them from this fate. All of these reactions are plausible, honest, and all could have the same result of crying visually, but none of them have the same motivation. Their behavior will change visually from one thought to the next, yet all of these reactions have the same result. This is why we need to deepen our emotional thought process to be in line with what our character may be experiencing internally.

If the same scene were played out and the actor was not reacting to the imaginary circumstances or thinking through similar thoughts to their character, they will have to be focused on having tears coming out of their eyes in order to do what is listed in the stage directions. The biggest problem with this result-driven motivation is that we do not want to cry in our everyday lives. Our bodies are naturally going to fight this response since we are not genuinely under this type of pressure. So instead of being present with our partner, reacting instinctually to the imaginary circumstances, our focus becomes internalized and logical-- halting the process of what could have occurred naturally.

So why do some actors still remain in a surface-level of emotion? The first answer is that they are not aware of how much preparation is truly involved in an actor’s process and they may underestimate how deep a character’s psyche may go. The alternative answer is that they are sincerely unaccustomed to feeling so deeply. There is nothing easy about imagining some of the most profound moments in our lives, and it is mentally challenging to develop the sensitivity and willingness to delve into these thought processes on a consistent basis. In fact, many choose to actively block experiencing emotions for fear of social ramifications, or they simply are not naturally attuned to this type of sensitivity. Regardless, the ability to produce sincere, honest emotion is a skill-set for an actor that must be trained and honed over time.

by Diana Frankhauser