What are you Capable Of?

In acting, you are often called on to do outrageous things. You will be faced with a situation in a scene that requires you to express some side of humanity that is often kept locked behind closed doors, barred with a pipe and barricaded with a wardrobe, desk, filing cabinet, and standing lamp.

These are the parts of being human that are objectively and subjectively terrible, and we simply don’t want to accept that they exist. But when it is captured on film, we literally cannot take our eyes away. If anyone has watched ‘The Boys’, you only need look at Homelander (played by Antony Starr). You cannot take your eyes off him.

Great anger, heartbreaking grief, hilarious mischievousness, psychotic rage. The great actor Christopher Plummer says: “You have to be able to frighten the audience if you're going to be an actor of some stature” and Antony Starr can sure as hell frighten the audience.

But it’s more than shock value. These are core elements of humanity that many people disregard, avoid, or flat out deny. Characters - and humans - are not one note, we are all capable of terrible things, but we are good people because we have the courage and sense to not do those things. We do not always play good people though. Whenever an actor says they won’t get angry in a scene “Because it’s not something I do, I’m not an angry person” then you are not doing justice to that character. And you’re lying. 

Accept that you have these parts of you exist, because they do, and use that knowledge to explore all the shades of your character. Let yourself be surprised by them in the scene!
 

A good exercise to use if you can’t fully connect with an extreme situation in a scene is the ‘as if’ exercise.

This is where you can throw away your past experiences and sense memory - they won’t help you here. Rely on the almost omnipotent tool that is your imagination. Imagine something in your life that would evoke that reaction out of you and really let yourself imagine it. I promise that you already do this twenty times a day without even realising it - imagining a terrible (or brilliant) scenario, and how you would deal with it, whether it’s confronting an annoying customer, talking to your crush, or fighting off an army of ninjas with flaming nunchucks.

Acting is a way that we can safely express these parts of being human, and in doing so hopefully communicate an important message about these sides of humanity to our audience. But it takes bravery, and courage to do it authentically. But most of all, it has to be fun! At the end of the day, it is all pretend, so allow yourself to be caught up in the process of pretending to be in a situation that is totally crazy!

I’ll leave you with a quote from great stage and screen director Elia Kazan:

“Whenever I have a character that's a hero, I ask what's wrong with him - Whenever I have a character that is a villain, I ask, 'but what's the good side’”