Acting and writing
In a recent online screenwriting class, I had this exchange with a pair of students:
Author: Scott Myers
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:16:37 PM PST
Subject: Lecture 1
A thread for questions and comments about Lecture 1, starting with a few questions from me to you:
* Have you ever thought about the dual aspects — External World and Internal World — of a screenplay universe before?
* We’ve all probably heard of subtext in comparison to dialogue. But what about intention tied to action? Isn’t it true that sometimes, a character does something, but their action reflects a different intention?
This is one of those dynamics — External and Internal — I believe a writer needs to carry with them whenever they approach the writing of a scene. It affects every aspect of the scene-writing process. For example, while there is a point to the scene related to the Plotline, there is almost always a related, but different point in terms of the scene’s emotional life (what I call Themeline).
Noting that we’ll be getting into these ideas much more deeply in the next several days, I’m curious what your initial reactions are.
Then this response:
Author: James Tichenor
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 7:33:38 PM PST
Subject: RE: Lecture 1
I spent a couple years in acting classes and action and intention are key concepts taught during script analysis. Not just in visual actions of what the actors do, but as the ways that actors show the character striving to get what they want on a scene by scene basis.
I was taught — a character will want something from the other character. The way they get it, the currency they use, are the actions, the intentions, that lie in the subtext of the lines they speak to each other.
If the character wants the other character to give them $10, then they will maybe coerce, beg, ask, demand, convince they character (other actor), and these will be the actions that live behind the lines.
This becomes the subtext of the scene, the moment to moment interaction as the character strives for what they want.
The beautiful thing is every actor will make slightly different choices. What they want might be the same (the clearer it is in the writing the clearer it is for the actor to play), but they way each actor chooses to get it will be slightly or radically different.
Would think of these actions and intentions as being exactly the same ones your writing about, Scott? I would think it would be important for the writer to have some ideas of what they think the actions might be, but the best writing will be open enough to allow for the creative interpretation of your collaborators, yeah?
My response:
James, you’re right on target. And your comments are one reason I urge my students to take acting classes.
I teach a core concept in my screenwriting classes: “Character = Function.” That sounds reductionist to most students at first. But from an acting point of view, it’s really about drilling down into a character and discovering what is at their core. Once you know that and whatever else the character is messing around with ‘up top’ (External World), you’ve got a handle on the character.
It’s like that anecdote of Robert Towne, talking about acting classes he took long ago with Jack Nicholson. The instructor set up the scenario: “Okay, Jack, you need to screw this girl. But I want you to seduce her by only talking about wanting a glass of milk.”
There you go: Want / Need. Just given that set-up, you give an actor a whole world of possibilities about how to go about their task, but equally as important, you’ve provided for them a framework, an understanding of some key aspect of their character.
The subtext of this discussion about action and intention is to raise a question: Why do we do what we do? And that is square in an actor’s mindset at trying to grasp a character’s core essence.
Per your last point: I believe a writer traffics in the world of their characters and gets to know them however best they can. But at the point that actors have been cast and the director is off to make the movie, the actors ‘meet’ those characters on their own planes of connection. Hopefully the writer has dug so deeply into the characters and conveyed their essence on the page that an actor dials into that, then follows their own creative instinct to elevate that character into a whole other level of being.
But that is an ideal.
The important thing is with this idea of action and intention, writers can approach their characters in an honest and upfront fashion — and in so doing, connect with their characters in a way that actors will also.
Then this post from longtime GITS reader Shea Vitartis:
Author: Scott Myers
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 10:50:06 PM PST
Subject: Actors, actions, and intentions
The important thing is with this idea of action and intention, writers can approach their characters in an honest and upfront fashion — and in so doing, connect with their characters in a way that actors will also.
Scott, have you been channeling Shakespeare? or great minds think alike
As Shakespeare would advise the actors:
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action
Here is the whole monologue (It’s awesome):
HAMLET
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th’ accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
Reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.
That gave me an idea. Wouldn’t it be useful to discuss the following topic on GITS: What the acting craft can teach writers about the writing craft.
Today at 4PM EST / 1PM PST (U.S.), we kick off a 5-part series on this subject. Any of you who are actors or have taken acting classes, I’m especially hopeful that you’ll get involved and provide your feedback in comments today and for the rest of the week.
See you later today!
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