I believe 80 percent of someone’s success comes from their mindset. To that end, I’m always looking for creative ways to “hack” it and hone in on the powers of your subconscious. Sometimes I apply these hacks to the business of acting and other time to the craft of acting. Craft is what I’ll be focusing on today.
I know you’ve heard of improv, Meisner, method, and the like, but you’ve probably never heard about the techniques I’m going to talk about next.
But they’re really powerful and you can use them to better understand your character so that you can deliver a more complex, layered performance.
If you’re interested in trying any of these out, I’ll include a link to a workbook with the three techniques I’m talking about today in the show notes.
Ok, let’s get to it. The first technique is called mind mapping. Mind mapping is a way to organize your thoughts and get a better understanding of your character, you know? It’s like a visual representation of who they are, what they’re thinking and feeling, and why they do the things they do.
To start, you just braindump all the key aspects of your character, like their appearance, personality, and backstory. Then you can create branches from there, like different sections of the map, to dive deeper into specific details.
For example, let’s say you’re playing a character who is struggling with addiction, you can make a branch of their backstory and add details about how they got into their addiction and what events led to it. Another branch could be about how the addiction affects them physically and emotionally.
Mind mapping can also be helpful for understanding the character’s relationships with other characters in the story. Like, you can create a branch for each relationship, and list out the pros and cons of that connection and how it affects your character.
It’s also useful to use the mind map during the preparation of the scene, ‘cause it can give you a clear picture of your character’s thoughts, emotions, and objectives in a given scene, so you can use that understanding to bring the character to life on stage or screen.
You can also use the structure of a mind map to make an empathy map. Empathy maps are just a visual tool to help actors understand the characters they are playing, by mapping out their thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. You can use these to think about details down to the smallest beat.
Overall, mind mapping is a super useful tool for actors, it’s like a visual tool to help you organize your thoughts, get a better understanding of the character, and make the role more believable.
Next, we have the Six Hats exercise which is a way to explore different aspects of a character. It’s a pretty cool method that actors can use to get a better understanding of their characters and to help them develop them.
Basically, the Six Hats exercise involves thinking about the character in six different ways, which are represented by six different colored hats. Each color corresponds to a specific type of thinking.
Here’s a brief breakdown of the colors and what they represent:
- White Hat: this is where you think about all the facts and information that you know about the character. Like what their backstory is, what their appearance is like, what they do for a living, who the other people in the story are that are relevant to the character, and any other objective details. You can also use this perspective to research the time period that the story is set in or to study the cultural background of your character to gain a better understanding of their beliefs and the way they move in the world. I also like to add facts that other characters have said about your character to this section. For instance, “June took 10 of her friends out for dinner on her own birthday.” Whether this comes from a purely altruistic point of view or something more selfish gets explored by the red hat.
- Red Hat: this is where you think about your gut reactions and emotions about the character. Like what you feel about them, and what you think their emotions are to all the specific situations and relationships in their story. Here is where you’d also explore what June’s motives might have been in taking her friends out to dinner on her birthday. Was she trying to buy their friendship? Or maybe she wants to be seen as the hero? Or hell, I don’t know, maybe she’s just really generous with people she loves. As I said, the red hat looks at these different aspects.
- Black Hat: this is where you think about the negatives or potential problems with the character. Like what flaws they have or what’s keeping them from their story objective or anything else that could be seen as negative.
- Yellow Hat: this one’s just the opposite. It’s where you think about the positives or good things about your character. Like what strengths they have or anything else that could be seen as positive. It’s also where you add up all the things the character has going for them that are external as well.
- Green Hat: this is where you think creatively and come up with new ideas about the character. Like thinking of new ways they could be played, new characteristics they could have, or new aspects of the role. For instance, you could play around with opposite reactions to the ones that are written in the script. You probably won’t end up using everything you discover but it might unlock some unique reactions that are very specific to the character and surprising to everyone else. You can also use this perspective to imagine different scenarios or situations outside of the script that the character might find themselves in and how they would react.
- Blue Hat: this is where you think about the overall structure and organization of the character. Like, how all the different pieces of information you’ve gathered about the character fit together to make a complete picture.
So that sums up the 6 different perspectives that you can use to gain new insight into who your character is. By using this method, actors can explore different aspects of the character, separate emotions from facts, and also have a better understanding of the character’s motivations and objectives.
It’s a really helpful way to think about a character from all the angles, and it helps you to be more creative and open-minded when approaching the role. It also gives you a better understanding of the character’s motivations, and emotions and how it affects the story overall.
It’s a pretty cool way of thinking about a character from different perspectives, that can help you bring the character to life.
Lastly, there’s the SWOT Analysis Technique.
SWOT analysis is a tool that is commonly used in business to identify the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving a specific goal. Actors can use this technique to analyze their characters and to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to achieve their objectives in the story.
The acronym SWOT stands for:
- S for Strengths: This refers to the positive aspects of the character that can be used to achieve their objectives. For example, a character’s intelligence, charisma, or physical strength could be considered strengths.
- W for Weaknesses: This refers to the negative aspects of the character that might keep them from achieving their objectives. For example, a character’s impulsiveness, lack of confidence, or fear of failure could be considered weaknesses.
- O for Opportunities: This refers to external factors that may help the character to achieve their objectives. For example, a supportive friend, a chance meeting, or a change in circumstances could be considered opportunities.
- And T for Threats: This refers to external factors that may keep your character from achieving their objectives. For example, a rival, a difficult obstacle, or an unfriendly environment could be considered threats.
I hope you found these techniques helpful and that you can apply them to your own acting practice. Remember, by using mind mapping and the Six Hats exercise, you’ll be able to gain a deeper understanding of your characters and bring more complexity and nuance to your performances. And don’t forget to grab your copy of the free workbook I mentioned above for even more tips and tricks on how to use these techniques. As always, keep experimenting, keep learning, and keep your mind open to new possibilities. Happy acting!