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Question 2

What is the Energy of the role?

In an analysis, first and foremost you have to look for a source of energy – energy of the role, the scene and the performance, and not merely understand the meaning of the words. Below you will see that almost every question or rule is directly linked to the problem of seeking energy for the role. Because this is the basis for the life of your role. Finding the logic, defining the emotions, creating the chain of actions, identifying the meaning of what is said and what is done is much, but it is not enough. Find the source of the energy! Above all the analysis is needed for this. Naturally investigating the role is important for the clarity of its intrigues, the composition of themes and images, for understanding the structure of the text and style etc., but more than anything it is necessary to find its energy. Without energy there can be no life, and so analysis should act as a strong and powerful generator of energy for the role. This can be attained first and foremost by changing your way of thinking. When analysing, try to avoid purely logical or linear approaches, from a justification of events, the “organic nature” of emotions, pre-programmed behaviour. All this is important but it is not enough. Go one step further to discover all the resources of energy: Make your analysis of the role varied, expansive, paradoxical, awaken contradictory emotions and thoughts, bringing them to an irreconcilable contradiction, and then the energy will appear.

You have to assimilate the fact that energy develops when there is a battery. There have to be “plusses and minuses”, “hot and cold”, “poetry and prose”, “the exalted and the base”, “the tragic and the merry”, “the vulgar and the refined”, “the emotional and the intellectual” and so on. By analysing a role on several levels you have to make a sudden transition from one to the other. This will result in the greatest possible energy. You can analyse one and the same scene according to differing theatre schools and directions. This will also bring you energy. You see? It’s all very simple.

If you look at a role from various standpoints, altering the line of observation, and ensure that the “battery principle” is observed, then the energy will increase, endlessly shifting from one form of its existence to another. This is the main rule by which all the energy resources of the role are to be discovered.