Character and the Actor's Craft

Acting is the art of making a character live truthfully in front of an audience. Whether the style is realistic or highly stylized, an actor must build a specific, believable person and communicate that person through voice, body, and imagination. This lesson gathers the core tools performers use to create and sustain character.

Building a character from the text

Character work usually begins with careful reading. The actor gathers the given circumstances, the who, where, when, and why the play supplies, and looks for evidence in what the character says, what they do, what others say about them, and what the playwright indicates. From this the actor develops a backstory and a clear sense of the character's objectives (what they want) and motivations (why they want it). Naming a super-objec