The Great Acting Blog: “Define Your Goals Precisely”

The Great Acting Blog: “Define Your Goals Precisely”

So many actors fail because they don’t define their objectives properly. A lot of actors grumble and complain because they don’t feel they have any direction, they’re not going anywhere. In the end, many walk away entirely because, frankly, their lack of direction leads to boredom and they go and find something more interesting to do.

But when asked; “what are you trying to accomplish?”, so many reply; “I just want a job.”

That’s not good enough. You’ll get nowhere with this kind of thinking. Defining your objective in this way makes it almost meaningless, no wonder there’s no direction or excitement. It’s just too vague. It will not help you chart a course, it will not help you make decisions, it will not energise your efforts. As we’ve seen, the reverse happens. “To get a job” is just not interesting. It takes us back to script analysis, you wouldn’t choose an objective for yourself in the scene that didn’t fire you up, an objective that was boring and ill-defined, would you? No, because such would defeat the purpose of setting an objective in the first place.

Instead of just getting a job, ask yourself what kind of job, doing what kind of work. Perhaps you want to be a Shakespearean actor, perhaps the ultimate for you is to play Hamlet, and perhaps your dream is to work at the National Theatre. Put those things together and what have you got? A pretty thrilling objective. Ok, it may not happen overnight, it may infact take many many years to accomplish but the point is having your goal defined in this precise way gives direction, energy and purpose to all that you do.

Define your goals precisely.

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