ON ACTING: Refining the Ability to Define Scene Objectives

I recommend an actor acquire and perfect the ability to define scene objectives by spending the rest of her life looking honestly and courageously at the objectives his/her own everyday life.

All knowledge proceeds from self-knowledge; and self is very cheap textbook. It is carried with the actor at all times.

Every day, three times a day, the actor should ponder a recent completed event or human interaction, and say: ‘What did I want from that person? Why did I do what I did? Why did I say what I said? Why did I feel what I felt? What was my purpose, or objective, behind all my words and activities?

It will be difficult at first. It will take tenacity and courage to hack through all the foliage of surface obfuscations and rationalizations that our life/mind has created to uphold our self-favorable stance, self-told lies to support our self-imposed mirror of philanthropic and charitable and unselfish posturing.

The search can be fulfilled however, and rewarding; but it will take rigorously persistent effort (‘why-children’ are particularly adept at arriving at objectives) to move beyond what we like to believe are the purposes behind our actions and the true reasons (life objectives).

‘Charity begins at home’. So does everything else.