ACTIONS
Drama is told through the actions of your characters. These actions must be conveyed
to an audience in order for them to fully appreciate, as well as understand,
the story.
Characters perform actions to get what they want. That seems rather obvious,
doesn’t it? But what may not be so obvious is that characters rarely perform actions
that aren’t related to attaining what they want. They almost never voluntarily take
their eyes off the prize. But exceptions do occur! Sometimes a character will commit
an action that is not related to their immediate want, but instead is generated by
their innate character—like the scorpion.
A character can perform only one action at a time! Sandy Meisner, the famous
acting teacher, would constantly encounter beginning actors who would think this
was not so. Perhaps they thought it was too limiting. Meisner would ask the Doubting
Thomas to stand up. Then he would bark out: “Turn on the light and open the
window!”
Another common misunderstanding is that actors act emotions. They do not.
Then where does the emotion come from? The emotional life of the actor/character
comes primarily from actions that are wedded to wants that are contextualized
by—embedded in—dynamic relationships and circumstance