What We Want...
In acting, what characters want means everything. "What do you want?" is the question directors and acting teachers will fire at actors, knowing that uncovering the basic desires of the character will reveal various paths to action, action being what acting is all about. The interesting thing about this process of choosing "objectives" is that it doesn't really matter whether or not the desire of the character is rational or achievable; it only matters that the character thinks it is and that they play trying to achieve their "objective" with full comittment. Nor does it particularly matter if the character achieves their goal...that is up to the playwright.
We do this as actors because that's the way people work. We take action based on what we are seeking, what we want as human beings. Whether it's love, money, security, pleasure, or any number of basic human needs and desires, we eventually take action to achieve these goals. But there is a major difference in the life of the stage and the life of the everyday. It very much matters in regular life whether or not your goals are rational and achieveable, and of course, it is critically important to us to meet our "objectives" and goals.
When we don't get what we want, it hurts.
What life forgets to tell you up front, of course, is that it sometimes hurts when we dont get what we want.
I read Ecclesiastes this morning. Let's assume the writer is Solomon, the man God blessed with unmatched wisdom and wealth. If there was ever a man who got what we wanted, I suppose Solomon would be the man. Not only did he have money, power, prestige, and women beyond count, but he also had what was more valuable than all of this: he had wisdom. Scripture says wisdom is the most valuable thing to acquire. "Get wisdom, though it costs all you have" the writer of Proverbs says. Solomon had it, yet at the end of his life, he was soul weary, wondering what it all meant. "Vanity of vanities" he said. "All is vanity."
Many translations use the word "useless."
In the end, Solomon writes that it's all about God and His commandments. Or, to put another way, it's about what God wants.
Here's a question: let's say you are called to play a play in which you are cast in the character of God. So you approach the work as you would any other, asking the first and most fundamental question. "What do I want?" It will determine how you go about your work in the play, so you have to come up with a solid answer. You decide to do research. You go to the text of the Bible, and dig in. You emerge from your reading, your plowing through the Old and New Testaments, and you think, "Okay, I'm God. What do I want?"
How would you answer?
What does God want?
I know the pat answers.
Just now, I have to go drive my son around.
...got any thoughts?
10:12:09 AM
