What is character? My thoughts as a training actor

Dear Reader,

I have been pondering character for a while now, a healthy thing to do when you are studying to be an actor I suppose, and have swung towards a concept of spheres. 

I heard somebody on the internet say that the writing, or story, is everything and that an actor should do all to honour this. I would agree. A writer creates a world when they craft a play, a world unlike any other, each play being unique to itself because the writer is one individual with a viewpoint they desire to express. 

So, entering a new play can be thought of as entering a new world, or sphere.

Within this grand sphere is everything. It is whatever environment the writer has imagined for the action to take place. 

It is the play as a whole.

With a few obscure exceptions, these spheres contain people. 

These people, characters, can be thought of as smaller spheres acting within the larger sphere of the play. They each have a will of their own in accordance with what the writer means to do with them, their personalities being set within the text itself. All the clues needed to unlocking these people are there in black and white, the actor gives them breath to come alive.

Using this concept, the job for the actor becomes about obtaining access to the very centre of their characters sphere, the heart of the matter. Through absorbing the language of the play one can weave their way ever and ever closer towards this central point and, once obtained, they can truly 'be' in the piece reacting naturally, in character, to the stimulus presented to them.

I was recently thinking on Aleister Crowley's maxim;

'Every man and every woman is a star'

I have come to agree with him, we are, in my mind, literally stars. I am self centred, or at least try to be, being that I believe my universe revolves around me. 

How else could it work? 

People are so scared of being labelled selfish that they forget to love and care for themselves, myself included. I have so many patterns to unravel due to the care of what others think it's a joke.

There is an innate spark of light holding together the matter I walk in. Of course one could easily say each of us is a black hole and that would be equally true, yin yang n all that. We as people are already like characters in a play world (except we are the writers of our own future, most of us just don't think we are for whatever reason).

If each character in the play is now thought of as a star, an actor can feel akin to to them almost immediately if they also think of themselves as a star.

Yet they appear so different, why?

This is because the light of this innate Sun is distorted by conditioning. Each moment throughout our lives, including birth itself, distorts this innocent light further and further more. The heart's Sun becomes encased in prisms, crystallisation's wrapping and protecting the true self. 

This layer is character to me.

The actor studies a part to understand their characters layer of prisms, to seek why, and to finally place this mask/distortion of light upon their own innate Sun. 

From which their unique interpretation of 'why?' the character 'is' can shine, uninterrupted by their own personality, illuminating an audience and hopefully doing the writer proud.

I love having the cause to think on these things, it is such a privilege to step into somebody else's shoes and look at the world from another angle. 

Long may it continue.

Peace be upon you dear Reader,

Rednaxela