Unlocking The Actor's Resistance to Textual Obligations, or
How Judgement Prevents Truthful Portrayal for the Actor

Living With It - This last month we have been rehearsing scenes with our first year actor's for their assessment piece. Five weeks rehearsal is set aside, with the final week being production week – design and technical students from second year make up the production crew and the over-all production presents as a piece of theatre in a studio theatre space. We have selected scenes from play and movie scripts that deal with the affects of crime on the people that commit crime and people that are affected by crime. The title of the show is 'Living With It' - the punishments of crime.

The first thing to say about this selection of scenes for students with an average age of 20 years and a set of life experiences that do not on the whole cover anything close to what happens in the scripts, is that they are a huge challenge. Why take on this challenge?  

It seems to me that actors have a responsibility to embrace the human condition and understand it, in the fullest way possible. As story-tellers, we choose to tell the story from within the experience, not as a narrator might – at arms length, and as actors are presented with varying script obligations they are also presented with the challenge of meeting themselves in relation to these texts.

A character may behave in ways (and often does) the actor would never behave. The character and relationship obligations that come through the text often require the actor to look into the parts of themselves that might ordinarily be ignored.

Sometimes the parts that have been ignored or less used are often judged.

If an actor is playing Lady Macbeth for example, she might not in life be a very ambitious person and would certainly not go to extreme lengths to achieve any ambition. In order to find the part of her that is ambitious she may first have to address the part of her that might judge ambition or ambitious behaviour in others.

This issue has come up quite often for us in the scenes with the first year students.

An actor must uncover any resistance to a particular text: Jake from Sam Shepard's – "Lie of the Mind" for example is capable of murderous and jealous rage leading to brutality, while the actor himself would most certainly not condone these actions, he must face the possibility of this capacity within himself and embrace this part without fear or judgement. When this is achieved he has created a greater potential for a more truthful and believable portrayal.  This does not of course mean that he is unstable or takes this energy and lives it out in his own life. On the contrary – it is more akin to self mastery where the energy needed is more available and useful to him within the context of his "as if".

What this focus reveals as part of the rehearsal process is that so often it is not only about the interpretation or the craft processes we use to bring the characters to life, it is the unlocking and recognition of those areas within us that are less familiar, or judged that prevent us from getting close to understanding the human condition we are seeking to portray. Creating this understanding gives us greater freedom to bring truthfulness and believability to our work, unhindered by pre-determinations and judgements.

Once again we are reminded why the craft and art of acting brings us to greater levels of personal awareness which mirror our desire to reach, embrace and improve the human condition in a personal and universal sense.

©2003 Martin Challis

For more commentary and articles by Martin Challis, check the Archives.

Martin Challis is an actor and director "down under" in Australia.
He recently  commenced a coursework Doctorate in Creative Industries
developing projects such as The Raw Theatre and Training Company.
He's also the director of the Studio For Actors and Ensemble Works. 
And... he has a sailing boat!

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