Some people think of acting as playing a character. If that is your definition, my argument holds. Everyone is an actor. Everyone has some kind of character. Everyone plays different roles. Sometimes you play the part of a parent, sometimes a boss. You play the lover and the villain...the hero and the victim. The only difference between you and the greatest actors, who have ever lived, is that they have the skills to do what you do naturally, ON CUE. They can take on someone else’s desires and go to work at achieving them with someone else’s words. It isn’t easy, which is why most people are pretty bad at it when they first try. They, in most cases, are only reading the words...reciting the lines. They are not going after anything. They are not using their words for a purpose, so they are ineffective.
But sometimes the character we play in real life is ineffective. At some point everyone has had the experience of being too shy, too frightened or lacked the confidence or determination to achieve their goals. They needed a different character to get the job done. In that case, wouldn’t it benefit everyone to learn to employ one during these times...to have the character that could do what needs to be done?
Many acting classes spend so much time trying to help the students to “be free”...to break through their blocks and barriers. Beginning students often become so obsessed with it that it becomes their objective in the scene rather than becoming absorbed in their character’s goal. And when your goal is “to be free” it assumes the condition of entrapment. No wonder they appear to be struggling. Get into your character’s mind...go after their desires and goals and you will have no room for your own self-limiting thoughts. This is true freedom as an actor. Just DO!!!
Shakespeare tells us “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. Guess we all might as well learn to act.
~Aasif Kshathriya