Narrative and Characterisation

How I Taught Drama. 7. In Which Dustin Hoffman Meets Eastenders, God and the Avengers

On a school trip to the National Theatre we, we being a couple of other teachers, myself, and about fifty drama students, bumped into Dustin Hoffman in the foyer. I was beyond excited, as were the other teachers, most of the students, however, had no idea who he was. You might ask what the hell we were teaching them, but we didn’t tend to do the method. Or film acting for that matter. This was in the days before mobile phones took pictures so I didn’t accost him and ask for a selfie, I just let him idle by and tried to look cool. He looked cool.

Apparently, and this was according to Ken Campbell, so I can’t vouch for its veracity but it sounds plausible, Hoffman employed a script reader to look through the many scripts that he was sent every month. This reader had a very specific task, Hoffman wasn’t interested in whether the script was any good or not, that would be more his field of expertise, what the script reader had to do was judge the depth of character Dustin would be playing.

Depth of Character

How did the reader judge character depth, was it a psychological portrait, a character of complexity that would enable Hoffman to exercise his facial muscles in a range of close ups? No. It was more mathematical. The reader had to count the number of choices the character had to make.

The Card:

Depth of Character

The depth of a character is measured by the number of decisions or choices s/he is called upon to make in the duration of the drama. (Parts, which make no choices, are technically not characters, but mirror people of the drama, or Dramatis Personae, even if they’ve got a lot to say). (See also Brecht - The Not-But.)

Choices

Hoffman wouldn’t get out of bed for any character facing under forty two choices (to tell you the truth, I can’t remember the exact number here, but it seemed a lot at the time, so forty two is, probably, a good a guess as any and it can serve as a homage to Ken producing the first stage version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) Bearing in mind that many, or all, of these choices will be ‘beats’ too, you can start to see why those actors of a certain note will be wanting to get their teeth into something this complex.

Famously, Meryl Streep got an Oscar for her role in ‘Sophie’s Choice’, you can count many choices her character had in that film and, note, especially, the enormity of some of those choices. Her character was laid out to us in all its complexity and we, in turn, sympathise and, maybe, empathise reflecting on what would we do if faced with some of those stark choices.

When looking through a script, or even when wondering which extract to choose for an exam piece, it is sometimes a good rule of thumb to go through marking out the choices, and establishing how they affect the character and their journey or ‘arc’. It is also worth considering in what way the choices other characters make might impact on your character.

Fixing the Not-But

Whilst these ‘character depth/choices’ are not the same as the Not-But, I include it here as a possible way of playing ‘choices’ especially, of course, if you are performing in a piece of Brechtian Epic Theatre. The example I use with students is the moment Kattrin, in Mother Courage and Her Children, has to decide whether to bang her drum to wake up the village, or not. The actor in Brecht, when faced with choices, has to show the choice they made but also the potential choices they rejected. It can be explained in this way - there is a corridor with many doors, the actor, playing a character, has to show which door they go through but also why they didn’t go through the others. ‘I am not doing this and this and this, but I am doing this. For Brecht it is important to show that humankind always has a choice, even in the most darkest of times and moments. Kattrin makes a choice and is killed for it.

Showing the audience the process of thinking behind doing something shows them the importance of critical thinking rather than loses them in the emotional charge of the story. This is not to say that it’s not emotional, but the spectators understand the process that is behind the choices made.

Narrative - Plot Progression and Characterisation

Plot offers opportunities for actors to show their range and recognising these three different types of narrative can enable the actor adjust their tone and gestures significantly. By focusing on these three narrative possibilities an actor can enhance their range suitably picking up the right mood, suitable gestures, and direction.

When put together with the other ‘rules’ in the previous six lessons the vast majority of students can master the basics. No waiting for confidence to develop, no expecting it to come naturally. These ‘rules’ will mean you have a class of actors. Next time we will move onto ‘creating drama’ a more avant-garde approach will be in play but, for now, let’s finish mastering the basics, first I’ll give you an insight into the narrative ‘card’ and then a look at my ‘lesson 7’…