Map of the Character

Following on from the Map of Me, we move into the imagined life of the imagined character. Here the actor will be living in the Truth of Imagination for a brief period of time, while her constant Truth of Daily Life continues in an unbroken line of common sense and physical awareness, at a lower level of consciousness.

Preparing the Map

We start with essential preparation:

List the people and places mentioned in the speech we are working on

This is the detective work: finding the answers to the 5 WH Questions: What? Where? When? Who? Why? As these are discovered, the pictures pop up automatically. In fact it is impossible not to have a mental picture triggered by any word or unspoken thought that we have in life.

If you see the word ‘elephant,’ there will be a picture/sound/atmosphere/place/time… every detail just given to you by the treasures of your imagination and memory. So, if this happens naturally to all of us, it will happen naturally to the character you are playing: Hamlet and Horatio will have the memory pictures of their life at University; Lady Macbeth the memory picture of nursing her baby who died.

Detail and Precision

The detail and precision is vital. In the video you will notice how I insist that Luke, as his character Nick, knows exactly who he means by ‘they’ and by ‘some women.’ Nick, who has had the direct experience that he is talking about in this speech, has lived through the event and therefore knows every detail. He has the ‘internal film’ of the event in his mind and recalls it — relives it — as he speaks.

This is how the actor can keep the freshness and immediacy of a speech however many times he needs to repeat it: by reliving the direct experience. I explain this to Ines in the video with her speech from Act One of The Cherry Orchard by Chekov, when Anya describes how she climbed the long staircase in the Paris house to find the mother whom she has not seen for years.

The Pointing Exercise

At the end of the video I mention the Pointing Exercise. This is a simple and very effective technique which slows the actor down and takes off all the pressure of ‘performing’.

This is the best way to start work on a speech or scene.

The Pointing Exercise is the best way to begin because it gives time for unforced, spontaneous, truthful emotion to happen right from the very start of work. The emotion is triggered by the power of connecting with others and connecting with the internal film. It is intensely personal, but felt as personal to the character, not to the actor. It is generous, not selfish.

Does it make sense to start work on a part rather coldly and analytically and then expect that somehow life and organic energy will happen to you later in the rehearsal process? Or when you get the costume, or hear the audience arriving? How about auditions when you will have no help at all from outside stimulus?

With the Pointing Exercise, we start with the direct experience of the character through the text, because of the text, and with the text. There is no divide between words, thoughts, and physical feelings. Starting with truthful connection, continuing with truthful connection, we will end up at performance time with truthful connection. And we will not have wasted our precious lives with anxiety, pretending, or rehearsing in bored exhaustion.

Performing the Pointing Exercise

It is simple: the speaker, using her prepared list of people and places mentioned in the speech, points to and looks at each person or place in the room chosen to represent the actual person or place as she speaks of them. It is so simple that it is very difficult to do without help!

What you need is time and precision. But what you usually get is rushed and messy generalised gesture. The actor worries about being ‘too slow,’ misses out on those vital pronouns ‘me,’ ‘you,’ ‘they,’ and hurries on to the next word or line. The actor just misses all those wonderful connections which are the life of the character at that moment.

(One thing to note is the use of ‘you’ when it often means ‘me.’ Notice how you use ‘you’ while talking to people. In the exercise, I insist on the speaker making a firm physical connection by thumping their chest on each ‘I’, ‘me’ or personal ‘you.’ In this way we find that every speech turns out to be about ‘me’!)

So, the Pointing Exercise needs to be done correctly to yield its benefits. It is not easy; however, having learned the technique, you have it available forever and usually only have to do it correctly once. Then you can continue at a more natural pace and rhythm to explore the scene.

It has proved difficult to make a successful video of the Pointing Exercise. We are trying another approach, as I do want to share it with you. It is one of the most powerful and useful techniques I use. It is also very effective in learning lines while doing your best acting… 2 for the price of 1… a bargain!

For more articles, please visit here. You can also find further information on this exercise in my book.