The purpose of this article is based on two premises. The first, “we are all terrible actors“. To this some might say “but I already know that, I’ve never tried to act” or that “it’s a lie, Leonardo Di Caprio is a great actor, as are a ton of the people in the movie industry, from Hollywood to Bollywood to our very own Nollywood and every other ‘wood that exists thereof.”

The second premise however gives context to the first premise “life is the grand stage“.

DISCLAIMER: The point of view encased in this article is in no way my complete view of the subject, however, it is as I thought, an interesting idea or point of view and so I decided to honour it by expanding on it.

Almost everyone I’ve come across during my two decade stint (a little over) on earth has admitted to having a favorite fictional character whom they would most like to be like.

Note however that the term ‘fictional character‘ in this context is not limited to just characters (people, Wizards, gods, vampires, lycans, magical beasts, superheroes, etc.) found in works of fiction, but also extends to any real person who is regarded by another as a role model or mentor.

My reason for this is simple, whatever thought you have of that person’s life is not itself based entirely on just facts, but a blend of fiction that makes that attributes of that character all the more desirable.

For example I think that Albus Percival Dumbledore is the greatest man that never lived, and in reality, only Arsene Wenger comes close.

Alright, enough with the introduction.

How many times have you seen a work of fiction and thought to yourself how cool it would be to adopt the traits of (a) certain character(s)? Or read/heard about a real person who has achieved something you would like to achieve and thought how useful it would be to try to become that person? (Maybe it’s never happened to you, in that case you can stop reading at this point)

In each of these moments, we begin to alter our very actions to suit the image we have set for ourselves either consciously or subconsciously. Very few of us are able to keep this facade over a long period, ranging from months to years to even a lifetime, but the bulk of us can barely go a day without breaking character.

Our reasons for wanting to be like other people are just as different as our faces, and that is beyond the scope of this article. However I would like to point the reason I think most of us fail, and this in itself is not a bad thing at all, on the contrary, it shows that our sense of self is much stronger.

We fail at becoming like other characters on this grand stage of life simply because we already have our roles, the problem however is that most of us don’t yet know what our roles are, so we audition for other roles in a quest to find our roles. Think of it this way, you are already playing your role on this stage, but you can however play it better if you understand who your character is, that way you can easily make improvs if need be, because you already understand who your character is, just like in filmmaking.

Take the movie Titanic for instance, Leonardo Di Caprio is able to play the role of Jack so effectively because prior to the shoot, he has read the script, researched on his character, and in so doing develops a great understanding of this character. Imagine for a second then if he tried to play the character of Jack whilst using the persona of Cobb (a character he plays in Christopher Nolan’s brilliant 2010 movie Inception). We instantly lose some form of connection to this character.

Another great example that springs to mind is Heath Ledger’s phenomenal portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight (easily the best superhero movie ever made). We are captivated by the Joker because Heath does a perfect job portraying him. Prior to the shoot, Heath “locked” himself away in a hotel room for a span of six weeks, forming a character diary (which can be found online) and experimenting with voices. Those were the lengths Ledger took to fully understand his character and deliver arguably the super villain performance of a lifetime.

Unlike in filmmaking however, we the actors don’t get any scripts that detail who our characters are, so we are flying blind, this is scary to us because of the uncertainty that surrounds our role, of which we don’t know yet. Slowly however we begin to get a feel of who our character is by the things and people we like or dislike, by our dreams and ambitions. We begin to realise who we are, we begin to get a feel for who our character is. But then something unprecedented happens. I will expand on this in sequel to this post.

At this point, some people may stop exploring their characters because just like before, the uncertainty of a blank script with no instructions is scary, so we look at the successful characters we like and adopt their script and try to play it to the best of our abilities. For some people it works, for others it doesn’t. But everytime we explore, we find out something different about our character, until we get to a point where we find out just enough about who we are and are able to improv when the need arises.

The idea for this article filtered into my consciousness eight months ago, but my laziness as proven by the number of articles on this blog should lend some idea as to why it is just being posted now. So hopefully the sequel doesn’t spend as much time being produced as it’s taking James Cameron to produce Avatar 2.