ON ACTING: Another View on 'Character'
How is 'character' revealed in a scene?
Think of 'character' as 'layers of personality' (SEE earlier March 14th blog on Character), vast reservoirs of underground bubbling sediments of emotional experience formed and laid down strip by strip by our long history: prenatal (inherited genes), adolescent and adult. As we move day by day through life, we carry all of these underground rivers with us. In acting terms, these 'sub-texts' vibrate heatedly yet normally contained beneath our 'outer earth', our cooler exterior, until a scene's conflicts--be they through engagements with events, other characters...life itself--becomes like an expolsive drilling bit, burrowing inexorably into our character, layer by layer, first through our outer shell, then ever deeper and deeper, exposing our inner emotions, allowing them to erupt to the surface, and thereby revealing who and what we are...and the experiences implicit in the formation of those inner layers.
Think of 'character' as 'layers of personality' (SEE earlier March 14th blog on Character), vast reservoirs of underground bubbling sediments of emotional experience formed and laid down strip by strip by our long history: prenatal (inherited genes), adolescent and adult. As we move day by day through life, we carry all of these underground rivers with us. In acting terms, these 'sub-texts' vibrate heatedly yet normally contained beneath our 'outer earth', our cooler exterior, until a scene's conflicts--be they through engagements with events, other characters...life itself--becomes like an expolsive drilling bit, burrowing inexorably into our character, layer by layer, first through our outer shell, then ever deeper and deeper, exposing our inner emotions, allowing them to erupt to the surface, and thereby revealing who and what we are...and the experiences implicit in the formation of those inner layers.
posted by Cliff Osmond at 2:24 PM
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