background work

Building a Backstory

Gang Darlings,

Jean sent an email this morning (mind you, he’s in Sweden - so it was afternoon for him) asking about how much focus should be placed on building a backstory. 

In the last Technique Class in December I felt everyone genuinely experienced the concept of making a single, simple moment believable. And it’s a really important idea. “I can believe this much today.” You really have to believe it though. And you really must go a moment at a time. 

Before I answer Jean’s question, I’d like to summarize all of acting. 

What we need is the naive belief of a child. I arrived at my brother’s house one afternoon many years ago and his son, Alex, was ecstatic. “Did you hear about Humpty Dumpty? He was an egg that fell off a wall and the army couldn’t put him back together.” Now that I think about it, that’s a very bleak nursery rhyme for a four-year-old. But the point it, there was a complete belief. Later in the afternoon Alex came into the kitchen where my brother and I were having a serious discussion about how we survived our childhood, and he asked me if I wanted some french fries. I then heard him in the empty dining room, “Hello, Clown. I’d like an order of french fries.” He had made an empty room into a completely believable MacDonald’s drive-thru. We need the belief of a child in our work.

Somewhere in Stanislavsky’s writings he uses the word perezhivanie. Among the many English translations of this word, which appears in his essays on experiencing, you will find: live through or live the part or to re-live. I love all these Russian words, but the point is: once we know the world of the play we’re in (the given circumstances, if you like), we need to launch imaginatively into this world and open ourselves to its influence. I’ve been reading a paper by a man named John Gillet, who describes this process as being "like breathing air into our lungs. This is when I start to feel I am (or as Benedetti, who has the best translation of Stanislavsky, puts it, I am being)." The character is in this moment, in this situation, here and now. It then allows me to live off the partner or the circumstances more or less spontaneously. This kind of surrender allows you to let the play happen, rather than making the play happen.

Okay … to Jean’s question. "How much focus should I place on building a backstory?” He also points out the very limited amount of time you have to prepare.

The good news is: with practice you get better and better at this. There will be a point where you never simply ‘answer the question’ but rather, you answer the question with the absolute truth of every word out of your mouth. And the even better news is, you will begin to answer the question with really gifted choices. 

The ‘backstory’ question, which falls in the Justification section of our technique class work, was demonstrated very clearly in our last class. I asked the class to answer the question, “Why did the woman leave the package in the department store?” The reason it was such a breakthrough was not only did I believe each actor in the class and their completely filled descriptions of what happened, their choices were kick-ass. I saw what they saw. I responded to what they described exactly the way they did. It was much better than Humpty Dumpty.

How much you have to build (for an audition) is not such a concrete answer. You really have to decide (again, this comes from exercising this creative muscle of yours) what is necessary. What I normally find is that actors build more than they need. Maurizio in building his snow boarding trip to New Zealand was drowning in stuff he didn’t need … or didn’t use. It was interesting certainly (the cost of the flight, where you had to stopover in order to get there, how you got from the airport to the lodge, how far the lodge was from the slopes), but his relationship to all of these facts not only overwhelmed him, they deadened him. Mind you, there are actors who can make reading the phone book interesting (do we still have phone books!), but you have to develop a very clear relationship to AAA-Trucking Company in order to do that.

Just a quick sidebar to point out how important it was for Maurizio to bring in his snowboarding exercise. Part of the reason you go to class is to try out every impulse you have. How else will you figure out whether or not they work! Everything is hypothetical and therefore useless, unless you try it out. Never forget that Stella Adler’s first class with Stanislavsky began with him asking her to tell him about when she had failed. If you don’t throw it out there, it’s all going to be stuck in your head and you’re never going to get anywhere. If you fail, you fail. Better in class than at an audition. 

The biggest problem about building backstory is that we throw in all sorts of things we haven’t earned – and don’t need. Keep in mind “the fact you say something doesn’t make it true.” This is the reason I’m so selective about what I choose. I’m lazy and I don’t want to have to build any more than I have to. When Ellen and I were working on her Defense Attorney the other day, I asked her how she knew the witness she was cross-examining was a drug dealer. She answered quickly, “I have an assistant who did the research.” And this is where we start to walk on very shaky grounds. Stella would stop us at moments like that and say, “There’s no assistant and she didn’t do the research.” Like I said, the fact you say it doesn’t make it true. 

Where we have to be careful is when we have a line like, “I’ve just come from town. The fire is terrible.” Stella: “Darling. There was no town, there was no fire, it wasn’t terrible … and you didn’t just come from there.” The reason she didn’t believe me was because I hadn’t taken the time to actually build it. I thought the conviction with which I said the line, would make it believable.

Another highlight of the exercise at the end of last term was that I asked the class to instantly justify the lady leaving the package in the department store? I didn’t say, ‘Go out into the hall and prepare and let me know when you’re ready to come back in.” They had to do it right away. No chance to over-think or stress out about it. I was astounded with the result. Everyone was able to very quickly build the department store, the lady, the package, and the moment when she left the package behind. Not only was everything clear, it was extremely inventive. I can still see Justine’s three kids (all very specific), Michelle’s woman with the Louis Vuitton bag, and Patrick’s girl getting a text.

My point: You know more than you think you do. If you don’t over-think everything, you can build it very quickly. The important thing is that you do build it. Karim and I exchanged emails this morning about Just Mercy, which we both watched yesterday. Practically nothing in the movie was earned. All the acting was completely on the surface, because they were only playing the lines. “The murder took place on the day of a fish-fry.” There was no murder. There was no fish-fry. And there was no day it took place.

Let’s face it, if you’re auditioning for film or television, you are rarely going to have to build something that is outside your realm of possibilities. It’s not as if you’re talking about having lost almost everyone in a platoon of men – or you’re a taxi driver during the 1930’s in New York. 

In order to answer Jean’s question, I would suggest taking in two considerations. One: what do I need in order to justify the world of my play? Two: What is the price I have to pay … what will it take … for me to earn my choices? Certainly it will cost you more to make believable the loss of a platoon of men than it will a woman leaving a package in a department store, but the principle is the same. And the methodology is the same. Build each moment believably step-by-step.

More later,

Milton

Is There Such a Thing As Too Much Research?

Dear Milton,

So how much research is too much? What’s a good balance. I’m getting addicted to research because it gives you ammo to build. 

Jonesing on Research

Dear Jonseing,

First of all, I’m thrilled that you’ve discovered the joy of research. The number of actors who are willing to believe that because they’ve had an experience, they are now qualified to play any part with a similar experience, is one of the reasons we have so few great actors. I’ve just been arguing on Facebook about the movie Tar and Miss Blanchett’s performance. The New Yorker review doubted that any of the actors had ever seen a master class at Juilliard. I would also suggest that Miss Blanchett did not explore what it meant to be a conductor. I don’t know that research could have helped her, but her lack of it certainly marred her performance.

Okay … so … to your question: how much research is too much? The issue is here is the difference between “research” and “actor research.” Simply stated: it’s the difference between doing a class report on a topic, – and having the experience of the facts you unearth from your research. One of Stella’s bumper stickers was: “Facts are death to the actor until they’re fed through the imagination and become the experience of the facts.” This is absolutely essential. Otherwise the research becomes a collection interesting, but dead facts.

Any knowledge from research is useful. I’m not sure you can have enough or too much. If the research is translated into something actorly. As an example, when doing the Clifford Odets play, The Country Girl, – a play about an actor, a director, and the the actor’s wife, – a play that takes place in the 1950’s in New York, … I looked up a listing of all the plays that were running in the 50s on Broadway. When I discovered that both A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman were running at the same time, it gave me a jumping off point for work on Bernie Dodd, the director in the play. The fact (the research) stimulated my thinking.

It’s an important part of the process. The research gets you to thinking. About all sorts of possibilities. What must it be like to be a young director when Kazan is everywhere? Kazan has Lee J. Cobb and Marlon Brando in his plays, and I have a washed-up alcoholic. The key here is translating that information into something that is useful to an actor. AND it's based on the text. 

Kazan made an extremely important comment in one of his diaries: all analysis must be translated into behavior. To expand on this: I would say all of your research, all of your philosophical musings, all of you analysis must be looked at as a jumping off point for something actable. What you cannot do is view research as merely interesting or even fascinating, it must be approached from the point of view of a particular character living in the world you are discovering.

And as a warning, don’t just leap on one piece of information to make choices. It’s all there to simmer in your brain. If we take the example I used from The Country Girl, Bernie Dodd is the director of a play. In the fifties. On Broadway. And the idea that Elia Kazan has two hit plays running at the same time as I’m beginning rehearsal, gives me something playable … but that’s not enough. In the first scene with the actor’s wife, Bernie bolts into their rented room … he doesn’t introduce himself, he doesn’t really acknowledge her, he gets right down to the business of looking for Frank (soon to be his lead actor). You really do have to let all the facts coagulate in your being. (Including, what does the director think about the wife of an actor?) Otherwise you might make the bogus choice that he’s a pushy asshole.

I personally don’t think you can ever do too much research. Every time I return to a play I’ve worked on before, I find something new. And much of it has to do with new research I’ve done. I’ve directed so many plays that took place during The Depression I feel like I lived through it. Recently I was working with Karim on a monologue from the Arthur Miller play, The American Clock, – and I was stunned that he’d discovered something I hadn’t known. Revisiting the monologue made us find a new road into a choice. 

The important issue here is turning research into something actorly. And not using research as a substitute for work. Or thinking that because you’ve done the research, you can now act the part. Talk out everything. If it’s not affecting you at first, eventually it will. Keep at it. The important thing is that you’re not reporting the research, but experiencing it. The way you say it is the way you’ll do it. If you tell me you’re directing a play and it’s the 1950s in New York … then I need to believe you’re living that experience.

See if this helps answer your question.

MJ

The Text Is the Basis for Everything

Dear Emma,

Thanks for getting in touch. Your questions cover many different areas of our work. I’ll try to cover a few.

Hello Mr. Milton Justice!

Thank you for providing this channel of communication. It's an honor to be able to ask questions of you.

So, my question is: How do we check the realness of the specific details we give our overall background work? How do we ensure we're making something of value rather than just making something up to make it up?

As difficult as it is to believe, learning about acting is a lifetime pursuit and neither I nor any other acting teacher can give quick answers. I was just confessing to my class yesterday that the reason I know so much about acting is because I’ve failed miserably so many times. Stella Adler once stopped me about 30 seconds into a scene in an extremely accusing tone to say, “Darling! That’s what we call Broadway acting. That’s not what we do in this school.” This is all by way of say, much will be learned from trying concepts and figuring out why something works or doesn’t work – and how to fix it. I’ve recently begun to suggest that every actor should keep a diary that is about discoveries. If you are brilliant in class, rehearsal, audition or performance … figure out why. What did you do? Same thing if you sucked. It always amused my son to go to the theater with me. On the way down the street after a play I would ask him what worked and why … what didn’t and why. There was no such thing as being an audience.

Keep in mind that the text is the basis for everything. And this is where you have to be careful. If I make a choice, there needs to be something in the text that leads me there. And I have to resist the urge to put my own baggage on it. I find that aside from The Biggest Sin, which I mention in my book, another tendency is to make choices based on what “I” would do, [“but it happened to me”] … or worse, my ‘extraordinary' abilities to analyze someone psychologically. A perfect example is adding to a belief that something happened during childhood that is never mentioned in the text, but I just arbitrarily decide it must have happened.

The purpose of talking everything out is that it helps our belief mechanism. If you start by understanding that you are building another character (not you) - and every time you go to her, it’s this other person. And then periodically you step into her skin. I’ve found the process of the late 18th century actor Coquelin helpful. He would close his eyes and build this other person and he was then able to “morph” into him. There’s a British actor I met who called it “shape-shifting". [Morph and shape-shifting both indicate an interest in science fiction. Perhaps science fiction holds the secret of acting!] 

If the answer is by seeing if it makes us come alive, then how do we get there with every piece of background work?

I understand the issue here, but these are two different questions. And the first question is actually the answer to the second. If something stops feeding you, then one of the ways to get it to continue to keep feeding you is to get more specific. If the scene calls for you to tell your best friend about the hot guy you met, initially some idea of the hot guy may work just fine. But once “he” gets stale I can get more specific and make him hot again. [And in answer to a frequently asked question: No. I wouldn’t use a hot guy I know. It’s part of the joy of acting that I can build my own hot guy.

All of acting is about building what’s behind the lines. Only in films and television, which are basically about plots, do we have a clearer idea of what we’re building. My student, J.P. Pitoc, had an audition for The Rookie where this kingpin drug dealer says to a guy, “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up after what you did to me.” It was easy. You have to build (as a monologue talking out) what he did to you. [J.P. got the part.]

When I was a highly disciplined young student, I would go through a scene and underline every line that had a past. It told me what I needed to make believable. One of my favorite examples is Vershinin’s entrance in the the third act of Three Sisters. The line is something like, “I’ve just come from town. The whole city is on fire. It’s terrible.” I stopped the actor, because it was clear. There was no town, he hadn’t just come from there, and it wasn’t terrible. The fact that you say it doesn’t make it true. 

And how do you suggest doing in-depth background work? I know you suggest talking out rather than writing or even worse thinking, but how do you go about it? Do you ask yourself as the character, or the character as if a separate entity?

There are any number of ways to approach this. And not only don’t you lose yourself, you are an important element in the process. If as an actress you’re working on Ann in All My Sons, you might say to yourself, “I wonder why she wants to marry her dead fiancé’s brother.” Well … that’s the beginning of work. You, the actress, are asking Ann, the character, for some in-depth information that you need in order to play this part. As a sidebar, it doesn’t mean that you can answer that question right away. We worked on the play in my Script Analysis class and it took us almost a month to answer that question, but … the point is, it’s the beginning of the process. So, yes. You, the actress, are asking questions and making observations that allow you to ‘morph’ into the character. Incidentally it’s the reason that your “Ann” will be different from someone else’s. You are making your own contribution to her based on who you are.

Like I said, there are any number of ways to approach this. Because I have a background in documentaries, I tend to think of interviewing my character. I had a Yale student who became slightly unhinged when I told him he couldn’t write down his past, so we made an agreement. He could write down questions he wanted to ask his character – as long as he answered as the character. I also think that with continued work on a part, you can come back and ask the question again. It makes sense that with rehearsal you get more depth.

If you have my book, you might look at the chapter called Ysabel Clare’s Timeline. Ysabel is a teacher I met at a symposium in Prague and she suggested that her students would draw an imaginary time line on the floor and they would step onto it and actually be in the moment the event happened. I’ve experimented with the idea and I think it works really well.

I hope this starts you thinking about your process. The journey of an actor is lifelong. Stanislavsky was exploring untried concepts with the Moscow Art Theater when he died. [In rehearsals!] It’s the joy of what we do. We never get it.

Thank you!