There are two stages in building up your part.

The first stage begins when the director gives the

cast his or her own view of the play, its characters and their relationships, its theme, and its style. Then, as
you study the play and the characters, you develop your own concept of the part.
It is often best not to see a motion picture or stage production of a
play in which you are preparing to appear. If you do, you are likely to find yourself copying another actor’s
mannerisms rather than developing your own understanding of the role and the play. To build a
characterization, choose a person you know who is similar to the character you are playing.
This individual becomes your primary source. Study and adopt this person’s posture, movements,
habits, and voice inflections. In many situations, you might choose more than one primary source and
combine characteristics from all. The books that you read to help shed light on your character are your
secondary sources. They are helpful, but good actors must always refer to life itself for appropriate
models.
The second stage begins as you go to rehearsals with the entire cast under the director’s guidance.
It is during these rehearsals, as you react to others and incorporate the principles of acting, that your
character develops into a living person. To avoid conflicts, differences in interpretations should be
discussed with the director as soon as possible.
Once you have settled on the general interpretation of your part, you must then grow into it physically,
intellectually, and emotionally. Your character’s actions and speech are your means of making that
character real to your audience. Voice, movements, and imagination are the tools you will use to make
your character come alive on the stage.

SIXTEEN KEYS TO CHARACTERIZATION

1. Internalizing When actors internalize a character, they develop a deep personal understanding of what
the character is really like. The actor has already studied the play carefully, answered the questions Who?
What? and Why? about the character, wrote a character sketch, and scored the role. Having done all
these things, the actor knows how the character thinks and feels. Once the character has been
internalized, an actor develops the ability to respond in character to any given situation. An actor’s
interpretation of a line and the reaction to the words or actions of other characters are all in a state of
readiness. In the event of a dropped line or other unplanned mistake, an actor who is deeply in character
will improvise a response in character.
2. Externalizing Externalization is the process by which the true personality of a character is made visible
to an audience. This is done through careful interpretation, nonverbal expression, voice quality, pitch, rate,
and physical action. For example, in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Captain Queeg’s conviction that he is
being persecuted is externalized through the ball bearings that he carries in his pocket. Whenever the
captain becomes nervous and panicky, he removes the ball bearings from his pocket and begins fidgeting
with them in his hand. As a result, the audience can see evidence of the inner man breaking down.
3. Concentrating Concentration is the ability to direct all your thoughts, energies, and skills into what you
are doing at any single moment. It often helps to remember that every line comes from the middle of some
larger thought. Lines are not isolated and independent from other thoughts and actions. As an actor, you
must learn how to concentrate simultaneously on character, lines, and action. You must sustain that
concentration through each performance and over the length of the production’s run.
4. Observing The fourth key to characterization is observation. Observe people carefully, noting how they
communicate fine shades of emo tions. Notice in particular how they use their small facial muscles. Notice
also their distinguishing physical characteristics and their unique voice and diction patterns. Do what most
professional actors do: begin an actor’s notebook and record your observations. Also, include pictures of
real people that you might want to use as makeup models in the future. Record comments and
suggestions made by directors and other actors. As you become more skilled in observation, you will begin
to see the many subtle things people do that reveal their inner thoughts and feelings.
5. Emotional Memory Emotional memory is the recalling of specific emotions that you have experienced
or observed. You have directly or indirectly experienced fear, joy, jealousy, timidity, anger, love, and many
more emotions. However, emotions may need to be adjusted to fit your character, situation, time, and
environment. As an actor, you draw on those emotional memories to give life to the characters that you
play. Keep in mind, however, that people can experience more than one level of emotion at a time. A
person, for example, is sometimes happy and sad at the same time. The expression of conflicting
emotions is challenging. When a part calls for the expression of conflicting emotions, you must reach into
your emotional memory bank to determine how to show the audience the tug-of-war between the two
feelings.
6. Projecting Once inner feelings are externalized, they must then be projected to the audience.
Projection is the sixth key to characterization. Strong volume is a part of projecting, but projection is more
than loudness. Projection is “reaching out” to the last person in the last row of a distant balcony. You
project your character through dialogue and focused action that seems larger than life. This projection of
character “across the footlights’’ generates the empathy between actor and audience that is the heart of
theater.
7. Motivating Motivation is the why of characterization. To be believable your character’s behavior must
be driven by an inner force. The inner force is intent. Intent is what the character wants to do. Motivation is
why the character wants to do it. Motivations impelling a character to act are influenced by personal
convictions, mind-set, self-interest, past experience, situation, environment, friends, and loved ones. Good
acting always makes a character’s motivation clear to an audience.
8. Stretching a Character Ordinary personalities onstage are very limited and rather boring. Stretching a
character is the eighth key to characterization. Stretching a character is the process of making a role
unique, individual, and interesting. The process should result in a character who is noticeably different
from the other characters in a play. In stretching a character, an actor’s aim is not to create an
unbelievable exaggeration but to identify the character’s primary personality trait and then to emphasize it.
If the actor is portraying a villain, for example, he or she might develop and emphasize the cruelty that is
the character’s primary personality trait. Even if a character is stretched only slightly, the result can be a
characterization that the audience will long remember. There is an old saying in theater: “Atenth of an inch
makes a difference.”
9. The Consistent Inconsistency The ninth key to characterization is called the consistent inconsistency.
This key has to do with a special personality trait of a character that the actor chooses to emphasize. That
trait is the character’s inconsistency, the thing that makes him or her different from others. It might be a
dialect, a limp, an arrogance, or a cackling laugh. Once it is chosen, it must not be dropped, even for a line
or two. If the dialect slips away, if the limp shifts to the other leg, if the arrogance is mellowed, or if the
cackle loses its fiendish quality, the characterization is bound to suffer. Actors, especially beginning actors,
must strive to be consistent with their characters’ inconsistencies.
10. Playing the Conditions The tenth key to characterization is playing the conditions. The conditions are
the elements of time, place, weather, objects, and the state of the individual. These conditions affect the
manner in which characters meet their objectives and deal with obstacles. Time can be the hour of the
day, the day itself, the month, year, or season. The place can be indoors or outdoors, familiar or unfamiliar,
threatening or comforting. The weather may be hot or cold, sunny or rainy, calm or blustery. Objects may
be familiar or unfamiliar, in adequate supply or scarce, in working order or broken. The state of the
individual may be extremely fatigued or well rested, wounded or healed, freezing or sweltering, healthy or
ill. Actors must keep all of these conditions in mind as they interpret their characters, for each of these
conditions can influence the way a character responds.
11. Playing the Objectives The eleventh key to characterization is playing the objectives. This includes all
of the ways and means that a character uses to reach a goal. The method used to attain a goal might be a
physical act, such as a slap, a kick, or a kiss. It might be a mental act, such as a decision, a deliberate
strategy, or an assumption. The method used might also be an object, such as a gun, a key, or a secret
code. It might also be an action, such as writing a letter, making a phone call, or planting an explosive
device. An actor must be completely familiar with a character’s objectives and must be totally aware of all
the means that the character uses to reach them. An actor must also know how the character will respond
if the objectives are achieved or if they are not.
12. Playing the Obstacles The twelfth key to characterization is playing the obstacles or, in other words,
facing each crisis or obstacle that stands in the way of an objective as the character would face it. An actor
must note carefully how the personality of the character deals with these situations. For example, an actor
must notice whether a character tackles an obstacle head on by considering it thoughtfully or whether the
character ignores it, denies that it exists, transfers it to someone else, loses control, becomes rattled, or
runs away from it. Each personality approaches a similar obstacle differently. You must know your
character’s response so that it can be forcefully communicated to an audience.
13. Playing the Object Not to be confused with “playing the objective,’’ playing the object has to do with
how an actor uses objects onstage to project character. These objects may be costume accessories,
general props, furniture, tools, or weapons. We learn much from the way a character holds a phone, uses
a knife and fork, or flutters a fan. Objects can be used to “set’’ or emphasize a line in the script. This can
be accomplished through preceding action, interrupted action, or concluding action. An actor using
preceding action might jab a log with a poker before delivering a line. With interrupted action, an actor
having a cup of tea might lift the cup as if to take a sip, but just before the cup reaches the lips, hesitate,
lower the cup, and deliver a line. The interruption of the flow of action causes the audience to focus on the
line. A judge who bangs a gavel after saying, “Case dismissed,’’ is using concluding action.

14. Energy Energy is the fuel that drives acting, both individual performance and group performance.
Energy enlivens a performance, makes forceful character portrayal possible, and creates greater empathy
between the actor and the audience. Physical energy produces the freshness, sparkle, and spontaneity on
which theater depends. The finest actors learn how to control energy and how to conserve it. Because
most plays build steadily to a major climax, the key scenes of most characters occur well along in the play.
Every performer must therefore control the use of energy and save some for important scenes.
15. Focus Focus directs the actor’s attention, action, emotion, or line delivery to a definite target. There
are many forms of focus. Internal focus on character includes focus on thought. Focus on the scene
concentrates on the central idea toward which a scene moves. Focus on stage position turns a scene in
and concentrates audience attention on the key player in a scene. Visual focus that an actor creates with
the eyes leads the audience to concentrate on the object of the actor’s gaze. Vocal focus projects the
voice to the members of the audience farthest from the stage or bounces a line off another player and then
out to the audience. Focus of feeling exists when an actor concentrates on physical or emotional pain. This
focus of feeling is called the point of pain. If the character has a physical pain in the chest, the actor
focuses on the specific spot where the pain exists—the chest. If the character is suffering from a broken
heart, the hurt is focused on the heart. The playwright’s writing, the director’s staging, and the actor’s
delivery of lines can all create focus. The main responsibility for focusing attention, however, is the actor’s.
By stressing particular lines, gestures, mannerisms, facial expressions, or behaviors, the actor focuses
audience attention on the key ideas of theme, plot, or characterization.
16. Uniqueness The final key to characterization is uniqueness. Every actor who plays a character should
be unique in that role, not merely a close copy of someone else. Each actor and each director will have a
different picture of the play and its characters. The director envisions each character as part of the total
production. Within the director’s image of a character, the actor must shape a personality that is special
unto itself.