“How can I know what the character is feeling if I haven’t done my homework?”
What homework are we talking about here? Your algebra test? Your history lesson? Reading the first chapter of you English book?
Acting is not homework. Nor is character study.
You read the scene (or the play). If it’s not written in Swahili, you probably understand what’s going on. The guy is breaking up with his girlfriend. The sister finds out she’s pregnant. The man is trying to steal a priceless painting. You get the gist of what’s going on very quickly. While reading it, your brain immediately makes choices and creates ideas about who that person is. You then get up and you try—that’s it.
You can’t ever know what the character is feeling until you give yourself the permission to feel what you’re feeling as that person. If you already know what the character was feeling, we wouldn’t have a play. (If Hamlet knew everything we wouldn’t have “Hamlet.”) The actor playing Hamlet is figuring it out as we, the audience, are figuring it out. This is what creates conflict in a story. This is what creates story, period.
You don’t have the character of
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