Advanced Drama
Mrs. Church
Summary of Michael Shurtleff's GUIDEPOSTS
"Auditions: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to get the Part”
1. Relationships - how to create them on stage.
2. Conflict - what are you fighting for?
3. The moment before - how to start a scene.
4. Humor - why jokes don’t work.
5. Opposite - finding the hidden tension in your scene.
6. Discoveries - making things happen for the first time.
7. Communication and competition - reaching the other actor.
8. Importance - locating the dramatic score.
9. Find the events - what is really happening in the play?
10. Place - create it on a bare stage.
11. Game playing and role playing - play them for reality.
12. Mystery and secret - adding wonderment to the scene.
Guidepost 1: Relationship (P33-34)
Start with the question: What is my relationship to the other character in the scene I am about to do? Facts
are never enough…once you know the fact of the relationship, you are ready to explore how you feel about
this other character…you must go further, into the realm of the emotion. You need to ask feeling questions
about your emotional attitude toward the other character. Do you love him? Do you hate him? Do you resent
him? How much? Do you want to help him? Do you want to get in his way? What do you want from him?
What do you want him to give you? These are the most important questions to ask. The answers to them will
allow you to function emotionally in the scene. That is your goal.
Guidepost 2: What are you fighting for? Conflict. (P42-44)
An actor is looking for conflict. Conflict is what creates drama. Maximum conflict is what you should be looking
for. Who is interfering with what you are fighting for? Do battle with her, fight her, woo her, charm her, revile
her. Find as many ways as you can to go about getting what you are fighting for.
Guidepost 3: The Moment Before (P67-69)
Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle, and it is up to the actor to provide what comes before. In
order to create this moment before, before he enters, the actor may have to go back ten or twenty years in
the life of the character. It is like priming a motor to get it started. You have to do a number on yourself, you
have to talk to yourself, flay yourself into feeling, so that you are aching to get on that stage or film set and
start to fight.
Guidepost 4: Humor (P74-76)
Humor is not jokes. Humor is not being funny. It is the coin of exchange between human beings that makes it
possible for us to get through the day. Humor exists even in the humorless. There is humor in every scene,
just as there is in every situation in life. ..I have trouble believing in the seriousness of a scene in which there is
no humor; it is unlike life. And yet actors will say to me, “How can I find humor in this scene? It’s very serious!”
For the exact same reason one would be driven to find humor in the same situation in life: because it is deadly
serious and human beings cannot bear all that heavy weight, they alleviate the burden by humor.
Guidepost 5: Opposites (P77-78)
Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene, the opposite of that is also true and should be in it. Think
about a human being, in all of us there exists love and there exists hate, there exists creativity and an equal
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Mrs. Church
tendency toward self-destructiveness, there exists sleeping and waking, there exists night and there exists
day, sunny moods and foul moods, a desire to love and a desire to kill. Since these extremities do exist in all of
us, then they must also exist in each character in each scene.
Guidepost 6: Discoveries (P81)
Every scene is filled with discoveries, things that happen for the first time. No matter how many times it has
happened in the past, there is something new about this experience, this moment. Acting is a whole series of
discoveries…The more discoveries you make in a scene—the less you rely on “we do this every day”—the
more interesting your scene will be.
Guidepost 7: Communication and Competition (P87-88)
Acting is supremely a task of communication. It is not enough for the actor to feel, if that feeling is not being
communicated…Communication is a circle, not a one-way street…It takes two to communicate: the sender
and the receiver. The receiver has to acknowledge the message by sending a reply back to the sender, thus
completing the circle before a communication has taken place.
Guidepost 8: Importance (P92-93)
Most people would walk a mile or sleep a week to avoid confrontation. We are trained as children that the
most admirable conduct is that which causes the least trouble, so most of us spend our lives avoiding the
conflicts of which drama is. It’s important for an actor to realize that what he must use in his acting is the
opposite of what he has been trained in life to seek. Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won’t help him
in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek.
Guidepost 9: Find the Events (P105-106)
I call what happens in the play the events. One of the actor’s chief tasks is to create the events of the play.
What are events? An event can be a change. That is the strongest kind of event. An event can be a
confrontation—and for every confrontation there is always a result, a consequence for the actor to present.
An event can be a climax, which is a major turning point in the lives of the characters.
Guidepost 10: Place (P114-115)
Most readings take place on a bare stage, which is not the most useful environment for an actor. It’s up to
the actor to create a place, and it’s well worth doing, for it will help him immeasurably in creating a reality for
his reading. The immediate reality of a bare theatre or sound stage is a real down; an actor would do well to lift
himself up, with a place of his own. The physical nature of a place is only the beginning. The most important
element is how you feel about the place. The feeling is most important.
Guidepost 11: Game Playing and Role Playing (P117-118)
When we play games, it is for real; when we take on different roles, it is sincere conduct for it is a way of
dealing with reality, not of avoiding it. It helps an actor to ask himself in each scene: What is the game I am
playing in this situation? What role do I assume in order to best play this game? The answer depends on the
circumstance; what people want from you, what you want from them, what you are offering and what you
expect. Ask what the stakes are, what you are playing for. But don’t get the idea that you will therefore be
unreal or insincere. Games are real, roles are necessary to deal with reality.
Guidepost 12: Mystery and Secret (P131-143)
In every lecture I give to explain the twelve guideposts I find the concept of mystery and secret the most
difficult to explain satisfactorily. The concept is mysterious too! Let me put it this way: After you’ve done all
the eleven guideposts in your preparation for your character, then add what you don’t know. But the most
fascinating acting always has a quality of mystery to us. Garbo, Brando, Olivier, Davis, Guinness—these actors
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provided us with a dazzling array of answers (they all do the eleven guideposts thoroughly every time they
performed), but then they add that quality we cannot explain, that exploration in relationships of what is
wondered at but not answered, perhaps cannot be answered. No matter how much we know about the other
person, there is always something going on in that other heart and that other head that we don’t know but
can only ponder. And no matter how we explain ourselves to someone else, no matter how open we are,
there is always still something inexplicable, something hidden and unknown in us too. I am suggesting you add
this wonderment about this other person. I am also suggesting you add, too, this wonderment about what is
going on inside of you.
(Source: http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=957)
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