The Great Acting Blog: “Having A Superobjective Leads To Artistic Acting”

The Great Acting Blog: “Having A Superobjective Leads To Artistic Acting”

There’s always more work to do. It’s never done. The problem with overloading ourselves with too many tasks at any given moment however, is that it leads to panicky decision-making, a diminution in our level of performance, fatigue and the placing of too much meaning on the trivial.  That’s why it’s so important to know what you want to achieve, to know what your objectives are – then you can eliminate anything that isn’t contributing toward the accomplishment of those objectives, and focus on the few key tasks that are.

Similarly in our work. Once we know what the Superobjective of our character is in the script (and all the objectives he needs to do in order to accomplish it), we can eliminate anything from our work which does not serve it. We can cut away all meaningless characterisation, emotion and naturalistic business, so that only the essential will remain. Consequently, our performances will be sleek, precise, intense, distilled, purposeful and true – in short, they will be artistic.