Playing Monsters

Happy Halloween! It’s that spooky season. The perfect time to talk about playing monsters!

So, let’s say you’ve been cast as the next Hannibal Lector, or snagged the role of Sweeny Todd, or will be taking over for Angelina Jolie in Maleficent 3 . . . how are you going to approach the role?

How do you “play evil” without becoming a one dimensional, mustache twisting villain?

The first thing you must realize is there is no such thing as a villain. At least not in a villain’s mind. And that is the secret to playing the bad guy.

Each and every villain out there feels completely justified in what they’re doing. They honestly believe that, no matter how awful the deed. Yes, they may know they are harming others to get their objective, but they don’t see it as something they are doing wrong. They see it as necessary. They deserve what they are getting and everyone else on their list deserves what they are getting too.

Acting, as we recall, is all based on taking action to get what we want while pitted against an obstacle. Our objective must therefore be positive, forward moving, and achievable. If not, it won’t read as human and real. It will read as melodramatic and “showy”—the worst kind of “acting”. So your villain’s objective must not be—I want to destroy the world! Bahahah! But more along the lines of—I want to make the world a better place by getting rid of all these people/things that are getting in my way.

Do you see how that is different? We don’t just want to tear things down. We, like every other real human being want to improve the world. It’s just when we play a villain our view of improving the world may not exactly match what most people think it should be.
Another thing that will help is finding the humanity in our villain. Maybe we’re playing someone who isn’t fully a villain, but they are doing something we wouldn’t feel comfortable doing. For example, in my classes last week we did a scene from Kevin Costner’s Horizon which was pretty heavy. In it a woman is trying to get her husband to stop some abuse that’s going on in the wagon train. But the husband refuses to do anything about it because he’s afraid if he confronts the abusers they might start shooting the place up. People could be killed, including himself and his wife. His goal is to keep his family, whom he loves, safe and alive during the demands of the trek west. If he stands up to these abusers that might not happen.

One of my students who was playing the role of the man was having a hard time with the scene because he would never do what this character was doing. It wasn’t until he tried to find the humanity in the character, realizing that the man was acting this way because he thought it was the only way he could protect his family, that he could connect to the role and feel comfortable playing it.

This can also happen with roles we think are silly or even stupid. There is a cool story about Sir Laurence Olivier, one of the greatest actors of all time who was playing the role of Sergius in Bernard Shaw’s genius satire Arms and the Man. Sergius is a fop, a self-important swaggering buffoon. And Olivier hated playing someone so idiotic. His attitude made the performance of the role stilted and shallow because he was reacting to his judgment of the character. It wasn’t until he got some feedback from a heavy hitter that he found his way with the role.

According to critic Robert Tanitch: “Olivier thought Sergius a humbug, a buffoon, a blackguard, a coward, ‘a bloody awful part’ until the legendary director Tyrone Guthrie said he would never succeed in the role until he learned to love Sergius”. https://www.theplaypodcast.com/arms-and-the-man-footnotes/

Olivier realized he needed to find something he could appreciate about the character or his performance was doomed. After digging he found he liked Sergius’ determination and built upon that. Afterward he played the role with much more conviction and his performances soared.

Speaking of monsters, this spring I will be playing Macbeth in my theatre company’s production with an all-female cast. I have quite a feat to figure out how I’m going to approach one of the greatest tyrants in all literature. I am a kind and sweet person. How am I going to justify Macbeth’s penchant for murdering near relatives and babies? I’m not at all sure yet how I’ll do it, but I know it will be a twisting labyrinth through my psyche and getting myself to that point of being able to soundly portray this maniac, without pushing myself over the edge mentally. I’m sure I’ll figure out something.

Speaking of pushing one’s self over the edge mentally, that is something we really want to avoid when we are playing someone quite dark. How do we do that? Making sure we are acting. That we are keeping that line very clearly defined. By also resting up and helping ourselves to recharge. I remember when I played Lady M that after a while I started to feel like I was going a bit unhinged. We need to make sure we are still allowing ourselves to stay present in our lives. Maybe we need a ritual when we leave the theatre to pull us back in to our own reality. Maybe we need to make sure we’re getting extra sleep. Not doing a lot of other things other than working on that role. Taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally.

Hopefully this helps shed a little light on entering the dark realms of the villain.

Here’s to playing monsters!