Acting!

It's been fun and fascinating watching the actors at work. If you saw the female lead on the street, she probably wouldn't jump out at you but when she starts acting she immediately becomes very attractive. How does that work? How do you act your way into looking different? It reminded me of that Star Trek episode Mudd's Women. You know, the one with the Venus drug that makes ugly women beautiful... and when they're ugly, the way they show it is by having messy hair and being lethargic.

I was noticing the actress was doing some interesting things during a scene.... some simple scolding of her husband. It occurred to me that she was bringing a different objective to the scene and then watching her objective being changed and thwarted. Coincidentally, my Acting Without Agony book came today and it opened to the page about objectives and how they can be changed and thwarted. It makes sense. One of the things that makes a scene dead is everyone performing the scene by reading lines or pushing the scene along. It's interesting to think of people coming into a scene with different objectives and then having them disappointed or met. I think I first read about this general idea in Michael Caine's book. He said that even a simple line like "would you like some tea?" can be animated by having something in mind ahead of time—like you really wanted coffee so the tea was a disappointment. It's more of that thwarting idea, I guess. I like the sense that performers are being carried along by a force larger than themselves.