By Daniele J Suissa

“I want you more…more… more… happy”  “can you be angrier” “when you say this line, can you turn your face to the camera?”  

Actors, you’ve heard all of these and much more.  

For some of you: 
You do not know better and execute what ever you can to “deliver” and “represent” what that director is asking and you think if you just get the chance to do it often enough you will learn!  Sorry, no it does not happen like that. Ignorance only breeds ignorance and these directors have not taken the pain to know better. 

For the others: 
You are a real actor with a real training and you close your eyes and heart just remembering you need that check to survive. 

Then how can you give a decent (why not great) performance under these conditions?  For those of you who have trained and taken class after class you know the answer but you forget to apply it or you find it too demanding a task for that director. Well you are not doing it for that director you are doing it for yourself and your audience. You owe it to yourself and your audience to get into that character and own its guts.  

For all let me tip you: What you need is called the score. 

Even when not conducted (directed) with brilliance or genius, a musician who respects every note and annotation on the score of the music he is playing will enthrall us, seduce us, and take us into the world of the music he is playing.  

An actor’s score is the same. If you know what key your part is written in, read every note, respect the “solfege” you are ready to overcome the non-communication flaws of your director. 

THE SCORE 

• Who is your character? (The Clef) 

What are the circumstances of your life? Stanislavsky, the father of all contemporary method of acting in this country, defines circumstances as: The human problem contained in a story. 

The Back story. Where do you come from? What were the major circumstances throughout your life? Who are the characters who influenced you? What are the events you could never forget and are in the attic of your emotional storage? 

Your Character Traits. Or what I call the Emotional DNA.  No two characters (or human beings) have the same dosage or composition when it comes to being: Jealous, courageous, tender, aggressive, etc. These traits are the buttons that other characters will push through the story. Scoring is finding these buttons, as they will come to color your needs (they are not to be performed in themselves.) 

• What does your character want? (The Partition)

The Character’S Main Objective. When you have found all of the above it is easier to find what you most want for your character’s life at the moment the story begins.  The incomparable Director and Teacher Harold Clurman, among others, call it the spine of the character. The SPINE must always be defined by an Active Verb. A verb is a command to action. Example. To protect my family. To get the farm. To find justice etc…. 

• How does your character get what he wants? 

Scene by scene OBJECTive (The movements)
Scene after scene your character continues to strive for what he wants with new commands to serve the Spine. Scene after Scene you must establish the main objectivE of the character for that particular scene and act upon it. 

BEATS (The notes)
A good dialogue should be the inevitable: words a character utters to express each of his needs. Defining the BEATS is identifying the actions the character needs to commit to get what he wants. When I speak of actions I of course refer to dramatic actions or WANTS, not to physical actions only (although one often provokes the other.) 

NON VERBAL BEATS (The accidentals)
This is SUBTEXT and all those PAUSES during which the character regroups and from which he emerges with a new need and new rhythm. 

So, have you finished scoring your next role? Now tell me if that director says: be more happy and you find in your SCORE that at this point the beat is, for example: To change her mood. Will it not be easier to WANT to be happier? 

THE SCORE is an actor’s most precious tool. Read Utah Hagen, Stella Adler and Harold Clurman. In different ways they all address the actor’s SCORE. Do what your director should have done, break done your script until you have a perfect score and never again “represent” what the director asks you to but act upon what the character WANTS. 

Directors, if you do not work on and master your communication skills with actors, design the score for each instrument, you will deprive yourselves of the greatest pleasure a storyteller can have. You can continue to direct traffic and all the toys that are offered to you or you can become A MOTIVATOR and master the orchestration.

Daniele J Suissa

International Award Winning Theater and Film Director-Producer

Founder of the Academy of Converging Arts and of The Directors Studio, Daniele is the author of “The Director as A Storyteller, The art of Mise en Scene.”

Born in Morocco, educated in Paris and New York, she has in her extensive career directed 30 plays, 18 films, over 200 hundred commercials and co-produced 27 movies of the week with major European partners. She has received numerous international awards.  While developing her next feature film based on a French play she directed in 1979, Ms. Suissa teaches Directing at UCLA, USC and her Directors Studio at CBS and privately coaches and mentors writers, producers, actors and directors. She is also the former Dean of the Los Angeles Film School.

“My ambition is to help you free yourselves of all the doubts and anxieties that do not belong to the legitimate anguish of an artist.”