Q: Is acting putting on layers or taking off layers?
The actor is responsible for inhabiting a character, not only so the audience can believe it, but so the actor can. In your preparation, you need to empower yourself so that you can fully inhabit the character and live freely in the moment. How do we do that?
Thinking in layers is great. What are the layers? Layers of our humanity include our belief systems, emotions, intellect, life experience, unconscious and conscious minds, personality, and more. Actors consider all of these aspects of character each time they take on a role.
We can begin to prepare by considering the given circumstances: Who you are, What are you doing, Where you are, Why are you doing it, and When is it. Simply answering those questions intentionally begins to connect you. Each question, if answered in depth, can evoke enormous amounts of information for you.
Let’s considerer WHO you are. You can look at the script and write down all of the things the writer says about your character, all of the things other characters say about your character, and all of the things you say about your character, then compare them and see which elements are the same or different. This should be thought provoking.
The character has as many layers as you do. But certain parts or yourself may be turned up and others turned down depending on the character’s circumstances. So if you’re playing a boxer and you don’t box, you learn to box. In learning how to box, certain aspects of your own personality will be turned up or turned down. If you are a very gentle and sensitive person in your daily life, what happens to that part of you when you have to punch someone out? It doesn’t go away, but it expresses differently. All of the layers are there, they are just repositioned inside of you, so that you can truthfully live in the character’s circumstances.
A good script is going to give you what you need to experience, and you are responsible for motivating it. You can mine the script for all the facts about your character’s life that you can, and then write a Character Biography so you understand the characters history, before the story starts. In this exercise you may invent relationships and events that shaped the character’s life, so you can choose what really moves you. This will help you to integrate what’s interesting to you personally with the given facts in the script. Let’s say you’re playing Mark Wahlberg’s character in The Fighter. That great script gives so many facts, but it’s up to you to make those facts sing to you. How would you feel if your brother’s addiction messed up your life? Your goal is to position your inner life so that it’s correct for your character. And you can do this for each of the given circumstances, until you understand why YOU need to play the character. Then, you’ll be free to step into it and live.
“Acting isn’t something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs, I you’re going to start with logic, you may as well give up. You can have a conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.” – Lee Strasberg
“Acting is a form of self-expression. It’s not becoming someone else, and it’s not playing make believe. It’s about using the fiction of being someone else to express something about yourself.” – Maggie Gyllenhaal
