Acting The Part, Part OneNashville

Nashville

Susan Roethemeyer

susansmr@juno.com

Acting The Part, Part One

Recently the Oscars were broadcast on ABC.

While one movie I did not expect to win won six of its eleven nominations (Mad Max: Fury Road), the one I did expect to win (The Revenant), won only two of its ten nominations.

Granted, they were two of the “big” ones – Best Director and Best Actor.

But it got me thinking of all the nominees, and the hard work they all put into their craft.

Especially the actors and actresses.

An actor, first of all, has to examine the character he/she is to play, and find the clues in the script that explain how the character behaves, how the person is, what they do, how they are seen by others.

Then the actor decides on an internal dialog for the character, how the character sees the world and his/her place in it.

And after all that work, the actor again examines the script, deciding how the character he/she has created will react to the things that happen in the script.

Of course, most of how the character reacts is dictated by the script, but is the character disgusted by what he/she does?

Does the character relish it? Or are they just indifferent to it?

This internal life is what acting is all about.

Many people cannot get this deep into another person’s world view.

But most of us enjoy seeing the fruits of the Actor’s labor.