This is the third slideshow in a series that distills some of the essential teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski in regards to the work a good actor must do in order to prepare for performing a role onstage.

The six lessons form an acronym--C.H.O.O.S.E.--which is easy for young actors to remember, and covers all the basics. Additionally, the acronym is appropriate because, after all, acting is all about making choices.

My name is Chris Schloemp, and I am a high school Drama teacher in Santa Rosa, California. I have been using this method for years now, and it does help beginning actors learn the fundamental tools of their craft. The ideas are Stanislavski's, the form of the acronym is mine, and others are free to use and edit this slideshow as they see fit. I hope you and your students find something useful in here.

The embedded video is from acting teacher and author, Suzanne Jentzen.

Holding an entire play in your hands can feel a bit intimidating. Where do we begin to get ready for performance. Some actors might simply begin by highlighting their lines and then starting the long road of memorizing them.

There is certainly nothing wrong with that approach, but saying the lines in the right order is not the end of the work--it is merely the beginning.

An actor must be able to analyze the text, to break it down into its component parts, in order to be able to put them all back together again into a finished performance.

First off, there is the play as a whole. Read the whole thing. Even if you are just doing a single monologue from a single scene. Read the whole thing.

Plays then get broken down into acts. Shakespeare's plays had five acts; plays in later centuries had three. Most contemporary plays have two: before intermission and after intermission. Know what the main thrust of each act is. What changes by the end of each act?

Acts get broken down into scenes, typically a distinct location in space and time. Whenever the action moves to a new place or time, that is typically a new scene. Know what the main thrust of each scene is. What changes by the end of each scene?

Scenes get broken down into beats. A beat is a small slice of the scene in which characters take a small step toward their goal, or objective, and there is some change in tactic by one or more characters.

Each letter in the CHOOSE method works at one of the levels on the previous slide.

For OBJECTIVES, we work at the scene level and the act level, because characters have larger needs and wants, but also smaller ones that they believe will get them closer to the larger life goals.

Note: Stanislavski talks about the goal that a character pursues in the scene as the objective, and the goal that the character pursues over the course of the whole play as the super-objective. We might think of these categories instead as micro-objective and macro-objective, or as immediate need and long-term need.

The assignment at the end of this presentation should be completed for each scene in which the actor appears in the play, but also for the play as a whole.

A scene is a distinct location in time and space, and as characters continue to make appearances in scenes throughout the play, they are usually making some sort of progress in terms of what they want to achieve in their lives. That's why it is important to spend some time thinking about each scene and tracking that progress.

The big question an actor needs to ask for each scene is, "What do I want?"

The most powerful verb in terms of understanding a character's motivation is "to want." Everything that human beings do derives from their attempt to satisfy one or more of their wants. Even when we do things that we actually don't want to do--for example, doing our chores--we do so because we are going after something that we want even more--for example, our parents' approval.

We call that goal we are trying to achieve, the objective. Some acting coaches or directors will also refer to this as the character's motivation, the energy that pushes them forward. If it helps, you can think of "motivation" as the fuel and "objective" as the desired destination, or the target.

So, where do we start?

Before we go too much further, let's make a distinction between wants and needs.

Needs are usually much more primal and basic, the aspects of life that will result in our actual death in a fairly short amount of time if we do not have them met. Things like air (dead in minutes), water (dead in days), food (dead in weeks) are about as basic as it gets. Shelter and clothing sometimes get included in this list as well, although it is possible to survive without either for some time.

Plays can be about basic needs like these, but then the story is usually one of survival, and survival stories are better suited for film and television. More often, plays operate in a realm where basic needs have pretty much been met and characters are now going after their wants.

Wants vary from person to person. They are the qualities that make each person unique and interesting. What one person might want desperately does not even make the top twenty list for someone else.

It is important to remember that characters experience their wants as sharply as they do the more basic needs. That's what makes them so interesting and dramatic.

There are hundreds of human wants that live just above that category of basic needs. Friendship. Love. Approval. Victory. Triumph. Glory. Vengeance. Redemption. Freedom. Wealth. The list goes on and on.

An objective always begins with two words: "I want." What follows is a declaration of a specific desire, expressed in a vivid active verb, and which usually also includes a person or object that can grant or withhold that desire.

Let's work through a simple example.

The first two words are easy. You always begin "I want." Remember that the "you" points to you as the character, not the actor, although a good actor always uses analogies from their own lives to gain empathy for the character they play.

Now, ask the question, "What do I want?" In our example here, let's imagine a character who has struggled to become a painter and wants desperately to know that she in on the right track. What she wants is approval. Great! We are getting there.

As we go deeper, we ask ourselves about the form that this approval might take. Do we want it handed to us, just given unconditionally regardless of how good we are? Or do we want to feel that this approval actually means something? We select a specific verb here: to earn. Nice! We don't want a participation button; we want to earn the approval.

Now we need to identify who can satisfy or block that want. This person or thing is known as the OBSTACLE, which we will examine in depth in the next presentation. For right now, we just need to put that thing into the objective. In this case, we decide that, although it would be lovely to earn the approval of art critics and the fans, what we want most of all is approval from the one person who never valued our talent when we were young: our mother. It's not just any approval that really matters: it is mom's approval that counts.

Finally, we ask ourselves, "How will I know that I have met this objective? What is the victory condition?" In this case, we know we have earned her approval when she decides to come to our gallery opening. The moment she agrees, we have achieved the objective.

Quick recap here:

I want.

Specific objective.

Specific active verb.

Person or object that can give or withhold the desire.

Victory condition.

The difference between good acting and mediocre acting often comes down to the choices the actor makes in regards to objectives. As with all artistic choices, there is not really such a thing as a wrong choice, but there are some qualities that make for stronger choices as opposed to weaker ones.

A good objective will have the following qualities:

A character must actually be capable of doing it given the rules of the play's context. It might be really cool to sprout wings and fly, but unless the play takes place in a magical realm where that can happen, that objective is off the table. This requirement also includes physical limitations of the character. The character might want to be a world-renowned classical pianist, but if he is missing both his hands, then that dream simply is out of reach.

The objective must be achievable within the scope of the scene or play. Ongoing or indeterminate goals like "I want to live happily ever after" or "I want to be an awesome pianist" are not concrete enough to work effectively as acting objectives. Instead, something like "I want to be a good enough pianist to play a gig at the local open mic night" is something that can be achieved before the final curtain. This requirement does not mean that the character does succeed; sometimes characters fail. In fact, they often do fail. But we have to be able to see how they might have succeeded had they made other choices in the play. Success is not the test; the test is the possibility of success.

A good objective requires something of the obstacle. If the objective only relies on yourself, then it's not very compelling. Like the Nike ad says, you just do it. If your objective is, "I want to spend more time practicing my piano," then the objective is too easy: just do so. If instead you say, "I want to convince my boss to reduce my workweek, so I can spend more time practicing piano," then you now have an objective that includes the obstacle. Much better.

(Note: the obstacle can be yourself and your own self-doubts, but we will explore that more in the next presentation.)

Finally, there should be a clear success condition. A marathon has a clear finish line. You cross it, and you are done. An objective like "I want to be a world-renowned piano player" is too hazy. How many people is enough to be "world-renowned?" If instead we say, "I want to convince the club owner to let me play piano at open mic night," then we have a clear endpoint. She agrees, we win. Done.

Every time a character appears in a scene, they have an objective. They want something from the other characters in the scene, or from the environment, or from themselves. They go after it as vigorously as the circumstances allow.

Usually a scene objective is a step towards achieving a larger objective, a bigger life goal for the character. These bigger life goals are what Stanislavski refers to as the "super-objective." It's the big one. The tests of what makes a good objective also apply to the super-objective.

Part of script analysis involves the actor charting how each scene moves the character closer to or further away from achieving the super-objective. If each scene makes the super-objective seem further away, then the character might get increasingly more desperate and thus more bold in their actions. We will discuss this aspect in greater detail in another presentation when we talk about STAKES and OBSTACLES.

How do you find the super-objective? The most productive way is to keep going deeper with "why" questions as you figure out each scene's objective. I want to sell my father's house. Okay, why do you want that? I want to sell my father's house because I want to forget the painful memories of growing up there. Okay, why do you want that? Well, I want to punish my father for everything he did to me as a child. And why do you want that? As you can guess, this game could get deep very quickly. It's a bit like what therapists do with their patients, except as actors we have to be both therapist and patient at the same time, with the help of the director and the playwright.

The hard part really is to figure out where to find all the answers to all these difficult questions.

Begin always with the text. Sometimes you get lucky and the playwright actually gives you "I want" or "I need" lines. Use those. Most of the time, you have to read between the lines, and investigate the sub-text. Don't just say the next line because it is the next line. Know why you are saying it. How does it help you achieve your objective?

There is also table work with your director. Your director usually has vastly more theatre and life experience, and has answered objective questions thousands of times. Collaborate on creative answers.

You will also make plenty of discoveries during rehearsal. Your fellow actors will be pursuing their objectives while you pursue yours. Their characters are your obstacles, and you are theirs. Talk about what you have decided.

The MAGIC IF is an incredibly useful tool here. Use your own life experience. How is what I, as an actor, want in life similar to what I, as the character, want? What are the analogies to my life?

Link to Video: https://youtu.be/WHW8KB-Kgro

Noted acting coach and author, Kimberly Jentzen, reviews some of same concepts of this presentation, with this excerpt from her book, "Acting with Impact."

One of an actor's most important tools is the recognition that an actor does not play emotions. An actor pursues objectives.

Human beings do not choose to feel one emotion or the other. The emotion happens as a result of either meeting or failing our objectives. The emotion is the consequence, not the target.

We don't want to be sad. Sadness happens when we fail to convince our lover to stay with us.

We don't want to be proud. Pride happens when we build a desk and someone buys it at the county fair.

When we try to play emotions, we inevitably deliver a phony, canned performance, with gestures that are cliche and stereotypical. On any given night, the tears may be there or they might not be. The tears don't matter. We can always pursue our objectives reliably, night after night, performance after performance. The portrayal will be true with or without the tears.

In the next presentation, we will examine what gets in the way of the objective--the obstacle--as well as all the imaginative ways we can get it out of the way--the TACTICS.

As usual, the directions should be pretty clear after the presentation. Go ahead and take it on.