Handling Terrible Writing
Actors
Roughly speaking
Are the only people
Who want to show emotion
And yet
Our job
Is to play people
And people
(Other than actors)
Don’t want to show emotion
People
Do their best
To hide what they are feeling
And instead
Try to solve things logically
So
Please
Ruthlessly
Focus on logic.
If you do your prep
And are clear about the characters’ relationships to others in the scene
Then just focus on logic
And let emotion take care of itself
“BUT WHAT IF I JUST FOCUS ON LOGIC AND IT’S BORING?”
Great question
Let’s explore
Yes
Your body might finish a scene and feel like you havn’t done enough
However
Great playwrights
Receive a salary
And are able to take months
Or even years
To refine their scripts
They can take a full week to decide between a full stop or comma in order to make that one sentence come alive
But screen writers?
There are very, very few screenwriters
Who can afford to take all the time in the world
Therefore
When we audition on screen
The vast majority of the time
(Particularly within Australia)
We are using material which is an early draft
So usually
It’s a bit rough around the edges
Which makes it confusing right?
If you have studied at drama school for three years
Under staff who have preached
“the writer is god!”
Then to not obey the screen writer 100%
Might feel like you’re doing something wrong
Or being a bad actor
But
And let’s make this clear
Great writing will flow when you simply focus on logic
Terrible writing will flow when you simply focus on logic
Sure, it might mean you need skip a word or two
Or blast through some text when the writer had actually written PAUSE
But that writer was most likely sweating the night before
Stressing over how to get the bloody scene finished for the producers on time
To be clear
Making sense of the script
Is more important than perfectly obeying it
Making sense of the script is the priority
And that will be achieved by focussing on logic
Not by focusing on showing emotions.
So
Do the prep
Then focus on logic
And let emotion take care of itself
Hope this helps
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