Principles of Acting
(Taken from Tom McNally’s Acting: The Active Process)
Principle 1: Purpose/Objective
There are many names for purpose: objective, intention, point of concentration,
motivating drive, or essential action. One could even call it, “What do I want?” Your
objective should be active: what are you trying to get someone to do? Use an active verb
when creating your purpose for being on stage.
Example: Fighting for my life, winning the tennis trophy, pull off the best senior prank.
Principle 2: The Obstacle
Obstacle defines what we must overcome. There must be an obstacle present if you are
to act. Ask yourself: “What is in my way?” The obstacle stands in the way of getting to
your purpose and must be dealt with and overcome. Obstacles can pervade a whole play,
or appear in a scene and at every moment within a scene. A key idea to remember: the
obstacle is not something you can “play”. You overcome the obstacle and play the
purpose. Obstacles can be either external or internal with many sources for both of these
originating in the circumstance or the scene.
External obstacles include: good staging, props, weather, costume.
Internal obstacles can include: stage of being, character elements, past life, time,
relationship.
Characters and place can be either internal or external, depending on the situation.
Principle 3: Tactics/Strategy
Tactics help you overcome obstacles and achieve your purpose. They can also be called
actions. It is what you do to get what you want. Tactics/strategy apply in every moment
of every scene. Like the objective, they are what you actually play. You cannot play an
obstacle-- you play the tactic. Tactics do not represent the big picture. They are small,
detailed, moments of acting, the line-by-line choices you make. A good tactic should:







Advance toward the purpose
Overcome an obstacle
Deal with current circumstance
Be expressed with an active verb
Connect with the other actor
Adjust to the relationship
Change with the orchestration/structure of the scene.
Always connect to the other character with your tactics/strategy—enter to win the scene!
All this involves the vital element of listening--paying attention to the other character.
What he or she says leads to your next tactic. Also be aware that you can listen on two
levels. The first is to hear the words the other says. The second level is to grasp the
meaning or subtext of the statement.
Good tactics do not represent an emotion or attitude. You cannot play a state of being.
To inform or announce are also passive; they declare action later, not now. What you are
seeking are active, playable verbs. Active verbs are ways of getting something.
Ineffective, Non-workable verbs:
To be sad, to be confused, to be depressed, to be elated, to be thrilled, to be frightened.
They are “to be” verbs, meaning they are simply a set of attitudes.
Effective, workable verbs:
To convince, to impress, to correct, to comfort, to awaken, to insist, to pinpoint, to
console.
These will cause you to act, to do something.
Tactics change with the circumstances. Keep in mind where and when the scene takes
place, your relationship with others on stage, and the orchestration/structure of the scene.
Also keep in mind subtext: the meaning behind the author’s words, what the lines mean
to you the actor.
Principle 4: Circumstances and Relationships
What are the details that influence behavior? Purpose, obstacles and tactics tell us
WHAT to play on stage. Given circumstances and relationships tell us HOW to make
acting choices.
Circumstances carry the details that influence every aspect of acting. There are seven (7)
major sources of circumstances which you will find in most scenes:
1. The Stakes. What happens if you win/lose the scene? What will it cost you?
What are you willing to do or give up to get what you want?
2. Cause and Effect. This has been called the “pinch/ouch” effect. Why say a line?
Why do an action? What are the circumstances? What motivated you?
3. The Style. Are you performing a comedy, tragedy, farce, melodrama? How you
play each line will need to be adjusted based on the type of play.
4. Time. There are all sorts of time: what time in history is the play set? What time,
season, of the year? What time of day? How much time do you have? Why must
you do what you do NOW?
5. Place: How does your behavior alter when you move from a familiar to an
unfamiliar place? From a formal to informal setting? From outdoors to indoors?
There are public, private, and personal places, and with each type of place comes
a way we typically behave in that place or space.
6. The Past Life. There are two types of past life: long term and short term.
Long term past life includes those events from which the distant past which
can shape stage action. (example: at a movie you run into someone you lied
about and got fired, at a wedding your seat is next to a former boyfriend or
girlfriend with whom you had an awful break up, the first day back to school
you have class with someone you fell in love with over the summer).
Short term, or “character triggers”, is what happened just now that literally
keys the character into action (example: you just heard something terrible
said about you and you charge through a door to confront the liar, you just got
a full scholarship call from a university and run in to hug and thank your
teacher/coach, you just ran five blocks in a pouring rain to have your first date
with that perfect person).
The key here is never JUST walk on stage. When you enter, bring with you your past
life—life is an emotional suitcase and actors pack or carry on stage specifics from their
past life.
In addition, consider Independent Life: being on stage, totally immersed in a task. Think
of why you are doing this now, not later. Think of it this way: if Character A is
concentrating on an activity and Character B wants something, then Character B has to
interrupt the Independent Life of Character A.
7. Relationship. To create relationship in a scene, look at two factors: evidence of
the relationship in the text and the emotional connection your character has with
another character. To achieve this you will have to work on two levels:
pinpointing the facts and then turning psychiatrist to discover deeper emotional
awareness of that important “other.” Ask yourself, “Who is he/she to me?”
Principle 5: Character
When you approach any role, you must search, detective-like, for both the inner and the
outer behavioral attributes of that person. The question is who am I? The answer is in
the search for the character’s life prior to the play’s beginning. It is the detailed study of
the physical and psychological elements that make up the person you are about to play.
You could also call this external and internal character development.
External characteristics: movement patterns, speech patterns, voice, make-up,
and costume (things that can be seen, or observed).
Internal characteristics: facts about family background, occupations, personal
relationships, and so on. This is done in reference to other actors, and cannot be
learned solely from observing the character.
Some actors approach character from outer (external) to inner (internal). The actor can
do certain physical things that will create a psychological response in you. One way is
through “character sculptures” where, like a sculptor, you define the action essence of
your character and begin to shape, within your own body, a figure which illuminates
character elements into a kind of living statue.
Other actors take an inner to outer approach. This can be called emotional memory,
emotional substitutes, emotional recall—just to name a few labels. To do this you use a
powerful memory or image from your own life and think of it while presenting textual
material.
As an actor, your goal should be to integrate both outer and inner processes of character
development to have a balanced character portrayal.
Principle 6: Orchestration
For an actor, the term orchestration is used to describe the composition of a performance.
It is the ups, down, highs, lows, the louds, quiets, the small moments, the climatic
moments, the fasts, the slows, the pauses, the outside rhythms, and inside rhythms of any
acting. Additionally orchestration should highlight what is most important in a scene.
This becomes the tempo of the performance from beginning to end, and should include
variety in showing the journey of the play. When you first read a scene on paper, you will
sometimes declare you cannot find changes in your character. Look again. Uncover the
surface, and look for subtle subtext. The key is to look for change.
1. Clarify the physical life of the scene and how those actions might alter from the
scene’s start to end.
2. Ask yourself how you are different at the start, the middle and the end.
3. Find two or three changes from the top of the scene to the middle and again
changes from the middle to the end.
4. Identify precisely the smallest, most subtle character adjustments on a moment to
moment basis.
It takes time and effort, but play detective, discover the currents that ebb and flow within
a scene. This done, you will have discovered orchestration.