The Twelve Guideposts
CHARACTER DISCOVERY PROCESS
Based on Audition by Michael Shurtleff
Objective: To analyze a character from a scene in thought and in writing.
Directions: On your own paper, address each of the following items as it applies to your
character. Talk through these choices with your partner (if applicable), in order to build
relationships. Use complete sentences, detail and specific examples.
DO NOT RUSH THROUGH THIS PROCESS!!!
1. RELATIONSHIP: based on the NOW
a. What is my relationship with the other person/people? (the facts)
b. What is my emotional attitude toward him/her? (the feelings)
o Do I love him? Hate him? Resent him?
c. Do I want to help him? How?
d. Do I want to hurt him? How?
e. Do I want to get in his way?
f. What do I want from him?
g. What do I want him to give me?
2. CONFLICT: What are you fighting for?
a. How are you going to fight for it? Find as many ways as possible.
b. Make the most active and positive choice possible in the scene.
3. THE MOMENT BEFORE: Each scene starts in the middle.
a. Create a moment before that reflects what you are fighting for in the relationship (your
motivation).
b. Describe the literal moment before. What was I just doing?
c. Describe the emotional moment (personal history) before.
4. HUMOR: What is it that keeps me from giving in to despair?
a. "Humor is not jokes. It's that attitude toward being alive without which you would long ago
have jumped off the 59th Street Bridge.”
b. Humor is lightening the burden, on ourselves or others.
c. Discuss unlikely places where you can utilize humor.
d. Are there moments where I attempt to lighten the burden for myself or other people?
5. OPPOSITES: Is the other end of the spectrum present?
a. Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene the opposite is also true.
b. Consistency is the heart of dull acting. Make your character unpredictable.
c. Find and describe opposites you can feel and want and play.
d. What extremes do I feel about the other people?
6. DISCOVERIES: things that happen for the first time. Acting is a series of these.
a. Avoid the routine, the humdrum. What makes this moment different?
b. What do you discover about yourself? Others? The situation?
d. Make an emotional discovery as often as you can find one in the scene. Look for them.
7. COMMUNICATION & COMPETITION: Communication is a circle.
a. Feeling something is not enough; it must be communicated. Am I just talking?
b. Sender must send clear message and check that it's received.
c. Receiver must hear the message and let sender know it’s received. Am I open to receive
the messages?
e. Communication is the desire to change the other person.
f. Find the competition in the relationship. Friendship and romances always contain
competition. ("We like the challenge.")
g. How do I disagree with the other person?
8. IMPORTANCE: Raising the Stakes.
a. The truth is not enough if it is neither dramatic nor interesting nor unique.
b. What is important to me right at this moment?
c. Am I making the trivial important? How?
d. Am I making the important trivial?
9. FIND THE EVENTS: What happens in the play?
a. Is this a change?
b. Is this a confrontation?
c. Is this a turning point?
d. Could I win or lose something right here and now?
e. List your events in order (in brief fragment form).
10. PLACE: Where are you and how do you feel about it?
a. "See" the place in literal terms in your mind's eye. Can you see it? Describe it.
b. Can you feel it? Smell it? Hear it? Describe.
b. Explore how you feel about the place .Describe that.
c. Are you comfortable with it? Why?
d. Why are you there?
11. GAME PLAYING & ROLE PLAYING: the “me” I am now
a. What is the real-life game your character is playing?
b. What is at stake?
c. What roles do you have to play to win this game?
d. For example, student vs. teacher, parent vs. child, etc.
e. How far will I go to win?
12. MYSTERY & SECRET: what we don’t know.
a. What can’t be explained?
b. What would I never tell anyone?
c. To what lengths would I go to keep a secret?
c. Real people never lose their fascination for one another because there is always more to
know.
“Every day, learn. Learn enough so that you can do good theatre."
~Michael Shurtleff