These 4 Essential Questions serve as the foundational tool for analyzing and establishing a clear goal, a clear action for each and every performance opportunity and challenge. By answering and living out the "essential" responses to these 4 questions an actor gives themselves a clear, doable, describable and relatively simple goal with a deliberate focus on the "other." This in turn creates a most favorable and fertile environment for living moment to moment in a full and truthful relationship while avoiding mannered, cliched and characterized performances.
Utilizing the 4 Essentials is a fantastic guide for creating an engaging and dynamic "point-of-view" not only for performance but also in creating compelling, 3 dimensional characters in scriptwriting and story development.
Utilizing the 4 Essentials is a fantastic guide for creating an engaging and dynamic "point-of-view" not only for performance but also in creating compelling, 3 dimensional characters in scriptwriting and story development.
of every given circumstance/scenario/story:
1. The Where.
You are always “arriving” from somewhere.
Where am I?
Where have I come from ?
What are my expectations/feelings about where I am?
2. The Moment Before.
What just happened?
What has gotten me to this moment, this place and or state of affairs?
In what ways has the previous moment influenced my needs of the present moment?
3. The Other.
Who (or what) am I interacting with?
Who are they to me?
What position do they hold in relationship to me?
What are they trying to do to me?
How are they responding to what I am doing to them?
4. The Action or Doing.
What do I want “the other” to do?
What action do I need to take?
What is at stake by getting what I want?
What is at stake by not getting what I want?
