The 6 minimum reads, the 5 points of story and the 10 questions to ask of your character.

Six Ways to Read a Script

1. The Monastic Read. Quiet, slow and objective. Three hours or so.
2. The Google Read. Quick language and reference checks.
3. The Research Read. Take a week or so filling in gaps in your knowledge.
4. The Malcovich Read. Me me me me me. Speak your lines but not those of the other
characters.
5. The Everyone but You Read. Them them them them them. Speak the lines of every
other character but NOT your own.
6. The Director and Producer Read. Read with close attention to how staging and
shooting challenges may be addressed.

5 points of story

Identify the key ingredients in dramatic storytelling that trigger interest in an audience.

1. A character exists in an environment - identify all the non negotiable elements about
the focal character and the environment that the character exists in in the entire story..
2. Something is making that character uncomfortable - find a core motivation that
makes sense of that character’s behaviour in the entire story.
3. The character does a number of things to alleviate their discomfort - list all the
things the character does (this can be done before you try to answer point 2 if you are
stuck finding the key motivation).
4. The character either succeeds or fails (or both) in alleviating their discomfort -
identify how they alleviate or fail to alleviate their discomfort.
5. BUT as a result they are changed in some way - how are they changed? If they die
how are they changed the moment before they die (clue: they are always changed in
some way unless they are in a sitcom, soapie or cartoon).
The Ten Questions to ask of your Character.

1. Who am I?

2. Where am I?

3. When is it?

4. Where have I just come from?

5. What do I want?

6. Why do I want it?

7. Why do I want it now?

8. What will happen if I don't get it now?

9. How will I get what I want by doing what?

10. What must I overcome?

1. Who am I?

The first question is dealing with the type of person you are. I'm sure if I asked you that
question, you would be able to tell me about your family background, your parents,
grandparents, siblings. You would be able to describe them in detail. Also the house you grew up
in, what it looked like, inside and outside. Your favourite room, what you could see out of your
bedroom window, the smells you remember. Your earliest childhood memories, the kind of
games you played, family holidays. Your education, favourite teachers, best friends, times you
got into trouble. Your first kiss, first job, your likes and dislikes, influences, attitudes, anecdotes.
All these good, bad, funny, interesting experiences shape us into who we are today. Most people
don't walk around with all these memories on their shoulders like baggage. They've seeped into
our being, our muscles, our subconscious, allowing us just to be, to exist.

When you play a character in theatre, TV or film, you should know your character as well as you
know yourself, so you can just exist and live. Of course that doesn't just magically happen, nor
does it evolve just from rehearsals. As an actor you have to plant those memories, anecdotes and
backstory.
So how do you build a character? Well, first a good script should give you some initial
information about your character, and also what other characters say or think about your
character can be very revealing. All this should be extracted and written down in a separate
notebook. The next stage is research. You need to find out through detailed research what the
history, economics, politics, music, art, literature, theatre, film, foods, fashion, religion might
have been at the time the play was written, in order to know how you would have lived and what
and who your influences were, just as you know these things in real life. Possible sources include
the internet, films of the era and finding images of landscape, as well as going to museums, art
and photographic galleries. Fill your mind with images - not facts and figures. The more visceral
your understanding, the better.

The final stage in building a character, once you've filleted the script and completed your
research, is to use your imagination to flesh out the details you've gathered and bring them alive.
Don't underestimate the power and the necessity of your imagination in the acting process. You
can't use your imagination without the backup of research and reading. Nor can you use your
imagination alone.

2. Where am I?

You might find in the script a description of the room you're supposed to be in, including details
such as the style and period of the furniture. What does it mean to you though? Is your character
supposed to be familiar with the surroundings? Is it the first time you've entered this room? Is it
a cosy cottage? A freezing barn? A familiar street? We usually behave differently depending on
our surroundings. You need to establish your relationship with your environment because this
affects the way you use yourself. For example, you wouldn't start walking around, touching
ornaments and putting your feet up if it wasn't your home. The geography will have an impact
too: playing someone from very cold northern climates such as Norway or Russia will be
different to playing someone in a baking Mediterranean climate such as Italy or Spain.

3. When is it?

We need to know what season it is, what year, what time of day. We tend to carry ourselves
differently in the colder months than we do on hot, muggy summer days. We would also hold
ourselves differently if the piece was set at the turn of the century. We must be aware that we
can't bring our modern physicality to a play that is of another period. People expressed
themselves differently then and didn't slouch or use modern gestures.
4. Where have I just come from?

You need to work out what your character has been doing, where they've been. When you make
an entrance on stage it shouldn't look as if you've just stepped on stage from behind the curtain.
Even if that's true, you should have worked out during rehearsal where you would be coming
from - the bathroom, having just brushed your teeth? The kitchen in the middle of baking an
apple pie? The car after being stuck in traffic? Shopping? What is your state of being supposed
to be on your entrance? Does it tell you in the text? Has your director informed you of what they
would like it to be? Or do you have to invent it? What's just happened in the scene before? Have
you just had an argument? Have you just been proposed to? Whatever the situation, you should
always know your previous circumstances at all times. It can be good fun inventing it, and no
entrance should ever be the same. Just think about real life: do you always enter your house in
the same way every night? No. Where you come from will have conditioned your mood.

5. What do I want?

This is a key question. "Want" means what do you need, what is your intention, your motivation,
your action? You should never walk on stage just to play a scene. You should always have an
objective. Often in a good script, an objective is written into the scene: to end the affair, to
propose, to move out. Your action can change from scene to scene but you should always work
out what you are meant to be doing.

You may be in a scene, for example, where you have very little dialogue. Instead of sitting doing
nothing, give yourself a physical action, which can be anything that fits your reason for being in
that room, from making a salad to polishing your nails. Even if you are pulled away from what
you're doing, so long as you're doing something, you've always got something to return to once
you're no longer engaged in conversation. The importance of this is so that you don't look or feel
silly on stage doing nothing. You must have a life on stage, you must have a purpose for walking
and talking, otherwise you are in danger of "just acting", which is fake. Don't forget you're trying
to be truthful and three-dimensional, and in real life, no one ever comes into a room and stands
with their hands by their sides or sits with their hands in their lap and just talks.

6. Why do I want it?

You must always have a strong justification for your action. All right, perhaps in real life we
don't always have a strong justification for everything we're doing but, particularly in the
theatre, you always need one. Most plays present a heightened version of reality (this can be
different for the naturalistic performances and stories we see on television, particularly in soap
operas). Having a strong justification means you have a strong motivation.

7. Why do I want it now?

The "now" gives you an immediacy that is crucial in acting and in any drama. You must know
why your motivation has to be right now, not before, not later but now. Why should we sit
through two hours of this play if you're not that bothered about getting the money or the house
or the power? This question is often referred to in the US as “the passover question” (Ma
Nishtana - Why is tonight different over all other nights?).

8. What will happen if I don't get it now?

The stakes should always be high. Otherwise so what? The consequences of not getting what you
want should always be very important to you. If the high stakes are not clear to you in the play,
you need to invent them, otherwise it will come across that you're not bothered at all about the
outcome.

9. How will I get what I want by doing what?

This question brings us on to how you break down a script. How do you know how to play the
line as opposed to how one should say the line? There's a big difference.

Once you've worked out what your action is (question 5) you then have to work out your smaller
action, which is called an "activity". You need to work out how you are trying to affect the other
person with what you are saying.

One way of doing this is called "actioning" your text. Break your script up into chunks: every
time you have a new change of thought, you need to find a transitive verb, a verb that is active,
such as to beg, to entice, to charm, to get sympathy (a good thesaurus is very handy here).
Remember that this technique is not about the emotional content of what you are saying or
feeling but about what you want the other person to feel psychologically. By playing these
chosen activities you are trying to make the actor that you are playing opposite feel something
specific in order to further your action.

So, you have to think: how can I affect the other character by doing what? At this stage you
should know who your character is, and your choice of active verbs should be informed by your
character choice and not your personal choice. If my character was a loving, open, sweet,
sensitive young girl and my dialogue was: "I don't love you anymore, I think you should go", my
verb will be determined by my above characteristics and not by the actual line itself. Therefore
verbs such as to plead, to get sympathy, to reason, should be chosen, as opposed to verbs that
might reflect another type of character, such as to demand, to threaten, to hurt. If in the
rehearsal a choice doesn't work then you can change your choice. Nothing should be initially set
in stone.

I like to call this process "scoring" your text. Just as a musician or singer would rely on their
score to know how to sing or play their song, an actor works out how to play the monologue,
scene or play. Once you've done it, you have to play it fully, otherwise it's pretty pointless. The
challenge is the execution of it. It's time-consuming initially to find the right verbs, but once you
have them and tested them in rehearsal, not only will you have given your performance light and
shade but also depth. It also means you do not have to fall into a dreadful cliche performance by
thinking of how to say the lines and what you should be feeling and emoting. This technique
allows you to be free and truthful without playing external emotion. It's really about what you
don't say and trusting that actions will speak louder than words.

10. What must I overcome?

Every actor should always have an inner and an outer obstacle. The outer obstacle is the
resistance (usually the other character) to obtaining your action. The inner obstacle is your inner
conflict, which you must always plant in a scene even though it can change. There must always
be a problem you are trying to overcome. If you think of yourself in life, you're never without an
inner obstacle. You'll have seen scenes on stage or screen where the inner obstacle has not been
properly planted: you get a load of actors just shouting, over-emoting and sometimes just
playing the aggression. If the inner obstacle is there, the anger, fear or hate, for example, then
you've got something to fight against in the scene. Much more interesting.

Actors may believe that they can do without formal training. But I have worked with untrained
actors, who have landed a film or a TV series on the basis of their looks, and seen them struggle
to be able to reproduce what they were able to do in the first take. Natural ability will get you so
far, but it's the trained actors who know what they're doing and how they're doing it and can
produce that emotion take after take.
To fully transform into a character, to be truthfully and emotionally connected needs hard work,
technique, good direction. But the audience should see none of this. They should see nothing
other than the fully realised three-dimensional character right in the truth of the moment.