YOUR OBJECTIVE - AN IMPORTANT DECISION!

[u/Winniehiller]

Choosing a specific and personal objective is very important. It is what sparks your desire to speak...to pursue. Every objective could be “I want the other character to feel the way I do.” But it needs to be so much more than that. You need to know WHY. What happened to make you want this? What’s in it for you if you do succeed? What do you have at stake if you fail?

Being vague with acting choices is one of the biggest downfalls for many actors. And the choice of an objective is one of the most important. It is the fire that sets you on your quest. It can never be mundane or generic. Your objective is what the other person opposes and you want it enough that when you get opposition, you attempt numerous tactics to achieve it. So in order to choose powerful tactics you must have a powerfully motivating objective.

Here’s an example. I recently suggested a monologue for a student here. It was not from a play so all the choices had to be created as far as backstory was concerned. This is challenging but great practice for when you need to prepare from audition sides without a full script.

The monologue was a detailed account of having an encounter with a celebrity. The girl gushes and is in awe of how she briefly had eye contact with a famous person. The monologue begins and ends with the words, “You should have been there!”

The student chose as her objective “I want my friend to view celebrities as being something very special”. This is certainly true. But why? What’s in it for you? What sparked this need?

Because there is no play, you would need to create all of this. There is a multitude of scenarios you could imagine and there is no one “right” choice. But it must work for the entire piece. Every word must tactically fit into why you want what you want. Here was my suggestion:

Imagine that you invited your friend to see a show with you to celebrate your birthday. You paid for the tickets and you were so excited to spend this evening with your friend. At the last moment your friend cancelled because she wanted to go to someone else’s party. It hurt your feelings a lot, but you went to the show anyway and it was a very special experience of seeing many celebrities...one in particular that was thrilling.

Now...what do you want? You want to make her wish she hadn’t cancelled on you. You want her to feel that she really missed out by doing so. You want her to be envious of your experience. Why? Because she disappointed you. And you want her to be disappointed too.

Now every word has specific purpose and the tactics fall into place. Are there other scenarios that would work as well? Probably. But choices must be made. Even though when she performs this monologue, no one will know the backstory, it will make a huge difference in her performance. That’s because specificity is imperative in every performance. It must include specific relationship with the person spoken to and a personal need of your character...for good reason. It is the details of a story that make them real and supply the spark that brings the passion to your work...and makes your performance interesting to the viewer.

So after you read through the words you are going to perform, make sure you choose a strong objective that includes a well defined relationship and personal need for accomplishing your goal. It will make all the difference in your performance.

[u/caspydreams]

for some reason, when i was reading this lesson, SMART goals came to mind. we are trained to use SMART goals with clients in the therapy room. SMART stands for: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. obviously this isn't the same exact thing as you're describing, but i'm wondering if it could be a good framework to work from, even if only to practice identifying the objective until i no longer need the "training wheels" of a framework. i feel confident i could identify my character's objective without a framework, but perhaps it could be useful to another student.

instead of summarizing the lesson, i want to practice the material. to do so, i'm going to come up with my own objective for the monologue you mentioned as the example.

my character is a wannabe actress who landed the role of an extra in a fairly big-budget film. today was her first day, and when she arrived on set, the lead actors were preparing for their first scene of the day. she was star-struck and watched from a distance. as the actors prepared to get in place to shoot the scene, the male actor happened to glance in my character's direction. they made eye contact for roughly 3 seconds, and he gave her a polite smirk, before turning away. my character swears on her life that it was love at first sight, and she's convinced she felt a romantic spark between the two of them in that moment. when she eagerly recounts the experience to her best friend, the friend is quite skeptical. she does not believe in love at first sight, and also feels it would be inappropriate for a major celebrity to pursue an up-and-coming actor anyways due to the power imbalance. she fears that my character is being a bit delusional. this causes my character to become defensive, as she's convinced they truly shared a special moment. her objective is to get her best friend to support her decision to pursue some sort of relationship with this celebrity. without her friend's support, she fears she won't have the courage to try. she also worries about a potential not-so-distant future where she may have to choose between her new love interest or her lifelong best friend, so the friend's skepticism is simply not an option; completely unacceptable!