All You Need is Love

Thank you, Beatles, for letting me borrow your song title for my blog title.  Please don't sue me.  I use it with the greatest respect and admiration.

Anyway.

I found myself yesterday thinking once again on the question of "Who is the best Doctor," which brings me back to my issues with the current run of Doctor Who.  Don't get me wrong, I still love the show. I just have...issues.  I'm not sure with whom I have the greatest issues - they are probably a combination of things - but they are there and I have tried and tried and tried to get over them, but they're still there.  And one of them has to do with love.

I feel like the current run is missing love.

Now, before you jump down my throat, let me say that I am not specifically looking for a romantic relationship on the show.  They've done that. There are many many kinds of love and I would like to see at least one be well represented but I'm not seeing that and my super crazy train of thought brought me around to this statement:

Actors need to be able to love.

I think in large part, who or what we love and how we love those things define us as people.  Love of self, love of others, love of power, love of money.  These are very strong motivators.  The woman who can lift a car off of her child who is trapped below knows the power of love for others.  Industry tycoons know love of power and money.  These loves shape what we do, how we interact with others, what we want, and how we go about getting what we want. I think they are an essential part of the human experience.

Loving something strongly is a frightening business, though, because that love can overpower all other desires and can make us do (or want to do) seemingly unreasonable, potentially harmful things.  If that love is ever taken away, too, the potential for pain is immense. But as actors, I think we can't let those fears get in our way.  People (for the most part) write plays about "the day something happened that was different from every other day," and those happenings usually mess with someone's love.  As actors, we need to love that thing to begin with so it's particularly upsetting when that love is messed with.

I think every actor needs to approach every project by asking at least once in the rehearsal process, "What does this character love?"  The stronger that answer, the stronger the performance will be.  If a character and/or actor truly loves something, the audience will be able to relate because they likely really love something, too.  If the actor is afraid or doesn't know how to fully invest himself in loving that thing while on stage, the audience will be able to see it.  I think these are what we call "unbelievable" performances.  "I just didn't buy him as a killer."  Because the actor didn't fully invest in whatever sort of sick pleasure that character gets out of killing.

Side note: As in the case above of someone playing a serial killer, I'm not saying the actor has to then love killing.  He or she does, however, need to figure out why the character loves killing and explore that.  Then he or she needs to turn that off when he or she goes home so he or she can continue to lead a normal, non-serial killer lifestyle.


Actors need to be able to love.

The theater is a safe space to get your heart broken and have your emotional guts ripped out.  If you are going to love something with abandon, the theater is the place to do it.  So do it.  Make the choice to love something for the sake of your character and the sake of your performance. You'll be so glad you did.