Backstory, character and making choices.

I was reading other blogs tonight and saw where someone had asked why in other theater blogs beside their own people seem to only talk about the superficial part of acting and didn't get into character development in their blog posts. It made me realize that's I hadn't talked about our I develop a character.

Why? Because I don't. The writer develops the character. I just perform the role of the character. I don't mean that I don't know how he thinks and cant break down a scene by what he wants but what it does mean is I don't worry about things like backstory. If it isn't in the text it doesn't concern me. I basically ask the following questions and leave it at that.

1. Where am I before the scene?
2. Where am I in the scene?
3. What do I want?
4. What will I do to get it?
5. What will I do if I get it?.
6. What will I do if I don't get it?
7. What are my likes and dislikes?


All those questions must be answered in the text. In either what I say or do or in what other characters say about me. That's it.

I once sat in an rehearsal around a table with the cast , director, producer and stage manager where each actor was asked to describe their characters. As they went around the table each actor had these elaborate lives thought out for their characters. Some which came from the text but mostly came from their imaginations. One actor asked me if I thought his character and mine were good friend and went fishing together. I answered "I don't know the plays about me finding a body and reporting it to your character the sheriff." When It got to my turn I just told the director "this isn't the way I work. I don't make up a back story. I ask some very simple questions, which I told her, and that is it. She just smiled and said "ok". The rest of the cast looked at my as if I had just sprouted a large idiot sign on my forehead.

I've just never gotten their approach to acting. If it works for them fine but don't begrudge me because I don't adhere to it. It just seems like too much hard work for something that is as easy as acting. Its not physics or ditch digging. Its acting. Its playing. Its going out on stage and pretending your are someone else and having fun. That's all.

When I am on stage I am not thinking about my characters backstory. Who does that in real life? I just try to accomplish my characters goals while the other actors try to get what they want, no matter how they got to that point, and see what the final resolution of the conflict is as the writer intended. That's it.

Just go with the text where ever it leads you that's all. Nothing more.

or as David Mamet said it so much better:

"Invent nothing. Deny nothing."