Taking the Stage

After being involved in theater throughout my childhood, I pursued a degree in acting. Actor training covers a lot of ground—emotional, physical, and technical. But at the center of all of it is a single question: how do you use yourself to convincingly become someone else?

One of the core competencies any actor has to learn is character development: what separates you from the character you play and how do you bridge that gap. It’s your body the audience sees on stage, but you want them to forget that during the show, and let the character become more real than the person playing them.

In the decades since, I’ve found that many of those techniques work offstage as well. 

The Costume Trap

It’s easy to approach personal change like a costume fitting—put on new clothes and hope they fit. You leave your own clothes on the dressing room floor and walk out a different person.

A clean overhaul.

This approach ignores an important component of character building: keeping what already works. It treats the existing person as something to erase instead of the foundation to build on.

But maybe the character you’re playing wears the same athletic shoes you do, or likes some of the same foods. Maybe they share your sense of humor or quiet sensibility—things you already bring to the role. When building a character, you aren’t starting from scratch. You’re starting with what you already have in common and you build from there. 

Entry Points

One of the most challenging roles I ever played was a character who was mentally unstable. Lenny. His logic was hard to follow, and he had frequent disruptive outbursts. He was very different from me. 

The trap is to play him as “crazy”. A broad, undefined label that excuses everything he does. You’re saying, “this guy is so far from who I am that nothing he does makes sense”. 

That’s how you lose an audience fast.

While learning the character, I found some things I related to: He was genuinely funny. He was smart, and liked science. He knew what he was trying to say but usually didn’t phrase it correctly. Those became my entry points to him. 

The outbursts, the explosive energy—that’s not me. I had to work toward those, and find ways to blend them into the parts that came more naturally. And over time, I did. 

Lenny started to become real to me.

Don’t wait to feel like the character. Start playing the role until it becomes natural.

The Givens

Identity development is a similar process. It’s careful construction, not total overhaul. You don’t become someone else, just a more deliberate version of yourself. The parts of us that are already there—the “givens”—are foundational. They’re the frame we build the rest of the character on. 

Theatrical character development starts with an inventory: What do we already have? What do we need? More specifically, in what ways are we like the character and how do we differ? 

Except we’re not building a character in a show. We’re building the person we want to become—starting from where we are today. In what ways is that person similar? Keep those. In what ways are they different? Those are the gaps we’ll need to close.

Character Inventory

The process is straightforward. Two inventories:

Inventory 1: The Givens

List qualities, tendencies, and traits you already exhibit consistently and reliably. These are things you do naturally—whether you want to or not. This isn’t a place for judgment, just an inventory.

Inventory 2: The Additions

Identify qualities the person you’re becoming has that you don’t yet possess. How is that person different from you? Be specific about what they do and how they act. Order them by proximity. Start with what’s closest to who you already are. 

Once you have these inventories, you have a map for building character. Start with an item from your additions list that’s close to who you are. Find a way to incorporate it. Work from the outside in. Mimic the behavior even if it doesn’t feel right at the start. 

Don’t wait to feel like the character. Start playing the role until it becomes natural.

Owning the Role

Every actor knows the role isn’t real. So does the audience. But we buy in and accept what the character shows us. By the end of the show, the characters feel inevitable. They act just the way you’d expect them to in every scene. 

The actor began with what was true for them. Then they added what was true for the character. They rehearse until the additions stop feeling forced, and the character and the person playing them are impossible to tell apart. 

As always, thanks for reading. I’m truly happy you’re here. 

All the best,

Nate