Siddharth Shasta

9 W’s of Acting

Whenever actor takes up a new character, the job is to understand the character.
According to me, an actor must not only understand it but know it inside out. The
script will often provide most of the details and for other, the actor will have to
invent.

Most of her techniques were based on Constantin Stanislavski. These questions

answered all the questions that actor asks or he must ask in order to prepare for the
role. These questions not only familiarizes actor with the role but gives all the
necessary ammunition needed during the performance. After these answering,
these questions actor will not have to think how his character will react when in
certain situations. Everything will be there in these 9 questions.

1ST: WHO AM I?
This is an obvious question but what answer you seek as an actor is important. It
must answer character’s name, age, education, physical traits, fears, ethics, beliefs,
likes dislikes, relatives or enemies.

Let’s go through them one by one:

Name: First thing you must learn is character’s name. Name of a person always
tells you where he belongs, what his family is. Often in some part of world names
tell the class or business of a person. Hence, note those smalls details associated
with the name.
Physical traits: Analyze the script for any physical disabilities or qualities that
stand out for the character. Like in My left foot, Christy brown suffers from
cerebral palsy. Only his left foot is functional and rest of the body is paralyzed.
Daniel day Lewis had to design his character around this physical trait. All
character will have some or other physical trait. It won’t be as proficient as the
Christy brown but there will be some. Even the superpower of the character must
come under physical traits.

Relationship with other characters: Make a list of other characters and note how
your character is affected by the relationship with them. Few of them will be his
friends, few will be his family and few will be his enemy. Relationship with other
characters will define the character’s behavior while interacting with them during
the scene.

Education: Find out what kind of education character has. If the character is highly
qualified, it will reflect in his/her body language and how he or she converses with
other characters. Often education will tell you the skills of the character. Knowing
the skills of the character is beneficial if you do some research and learn them.
Your performance will be more believable.

Beliefs: our own personal beliefs make us what we are, how we think and how we
handle certain situations. The same way a character will have his or own personal
opinions. For me, this is one of the most important aspects of any character to
analyze. It will help you answer very specific questions like what the character will
react or what actions a character must take in givens situations.

Asthe best way to learn character’s personal opinion is to ask the writer of the
script because some time the script doesn’t convey the internal make up a
character.
Fears: another important aspect to learn about characters is his or her fears. List out
the fears in the front page of the script. As the story goes along character will try to
address his fears. Either he will succeed or fail but he or she will address his or her
fears.

Keeping this in mind, you will get know the character you are going to play.

2ND: WHAT TIME IS IT?

Significance of time plays key role in any story. What it does is, gives you its set of
rules that you cannot break. Learn in which century or decade does the story take
place. Do some research on that era of the story. Look for how people dressed,
how they speak, what was in trend, technology. Familiarize yourself with that time.

And time also includes which season it is, is it fall, is it autumn, or summer. Take a
note of that. Even knowing the time of the day is also crucial. I often cringe when
people handle the early morning or very late-night scene with normal voice or with
energy. This is the time when your body energy is to the lowest. If you play with
groggy voice, and little moody way, audience will relate to the scene more
effectively.

3RD: WHERE AM I?
After the question who am I, this is the most important of the 9 questions because
place in which the story takes place effects the character the most. The feel and
emotions of the story come from the world it takes place. I believe the place itself
acts as a character in a story.

So, if your story is limited to a city, or town or even a house, study it thoroughly. If
possible spend few days in that place to get feel of that place.
4TH: WHAT SURROUNDS ME?
If you are acting for camera it’s a great practice to spend few minutes just
exploring the set or the location. Note the animate or inanimate objects. Play with
them. Feel the furniture if it’s a interior scene. Feel the weather if it’s an exterior
scene.

Most of the just by exploring you will be hit with unique ideas for playing the
scene. What the surrounding does is give the triggers for the small actions that
could make the scene interesting.

You don’t have to plan anything but be aware of what surrounds you.

5TH: WHAT ARE MY CIRCUMSTANCES?

Before going into a scene, you must know three things:

What was your previous circumstance?
What is your present circumstance?
What your future circumstance will be?
Always enter into the scene with previous circumstance. For example, if you had a
big fight, you were angry, it must reflect into your current circumstance. You must
still be angry and upset. And as the scene continues, your circumstance will change
as you move towards achieving scene objective.

These is necessary because as humans we take time shifting from one emotion to
other. Any thing bad or good happening sticks with us for long time and it affects
our daily routine. Effects last until another big event occurs.

So, while working on any script, right in front of the scene write where you are
coming from and what was your mood. If its is new start or there is a leap of days,
months or years, imagine the circumstance that might have occurred before current
circumstance your character is facing.

Note: It’s all about creating timeline of happening for your character.

6TH: WHAT ARE MY RELATIONSHIPS?

When you talk about relationship in terms of acting it doesn’t mean only
relationship with other people but it also means relationship with objects, and
events.

Relationship with people is basic thing to learn about any character. But it is also
important to learn what is your relationship with objects or events.
Yes, examples I used are those in which object and event play key role in defining
circumstances the characters face. But if you look closer every story will have that
one object or event the character will be affected by. You will have to test and try
to find which works best. Sometimes object or events are biggest trigger for some
emotions that you seek during performance.

7TH: WHAT DO I WANT?

You must understand this question. Even if you don’t go through the whole 9
question process and just answer this one, you will do a decent job as an actor.

This question has two parts:

Scene objective
Overall objective
Objective in acting important term. You take any method acting book, you will
come across the term objective. No matter which acting system you follow,
everyone speaks heavily about the objective of the character in story.
Let’s look at the two parts:

Scene objective: When you do a cold reading, you must find out your character is
after in this scene. Is he trying to convince his girlfriend to stay, or he trying to
convince police is not the murderer? Whatever may be, find that objective.

Best practice is to write scene objective adjacent to every scene. If you are
confused, try few different things. Eventually, you will find the best objective.

Overall objective: Once you have read the whole script. You must be able to write
in one line what your character want. One thing to keep in mind is keep the
objective emotional. It could be romantic relationship, it could be revenge, or
winning someone trust back.

8TH: WHAT’S IN MY WAY?

This question must answer what are the obstacles that your character face?
Usually, a story lays out series of obstacles during the story. You will have to list
the all the obstacles in series. Best way to go about is to answer this question with
objective. When you are looking for the scene objectives, you should also ask what
are obstacles that stop your character from achieving that goal.

And if you think, story is all about characters getting over obstacles and achieving
their objectives.

9TH: HOW DO I GET WHAT I WANT?

This question is almost summarizing all 9 questions as it gives an actor an action to
do. Performance is all about doing something and to reach that step, you will have
to understand the character, the place he or she is in, circumstance, then what he or
she must achieve and what is stopping him or her form achieving. After
comprehending all the information, character will have an solid action to take. Like
if the boyfriend is suppose to stop his girlfriend from leaving, if must hold her
hand pull her closer to him, tell his lines that must compel the girlfriend to stay
back.

To answer this question, go scene by scene and list the action required for that
scene. But don’t just write down the physical movement, it must a one line with
emotional aspect. Because emotional aspect will organically extract an natural
physical action out of you.

So, here are the 9 questions that you must answer as part of preparing for any
character. My advice is to write everything on the script. First attempt wont land
you with all the right answer as there no blueprint to making a character but testing
and trying will help you build a believable character.

Always use directors and writers help while answering these questions.