To give yourself over to a role you must find your way to fall in love with the story. Find a way to reach the core of the playwright’s inspiration. Find what it is that moved them to write the story. It will be through your investigation of the story that you’ll eventually discover a very universal, very human, theme being played out. It will be the theme that will move you. Once you are deeply moved by that, you will find your inspiration for your performance because your focus will no longer be on yourself and the results that you hope to achieve. Instead, your focus will be on the story and you will want to tell it because you are inspired by it.
So if you’re not there yet, go back to your script. Read every word. Read not only the description of your character but the descriptions of every character, read the descriptions of the set, find the rhythm of the story, consider yourself in the situation, contemplate the opening, contemplate the end. Do that day after day until you find the core of the story. “Doing a good job on a role” is not a deep enough inspiration to motivate an actor to full expression. If you want to set yourself up for be fulfilled, you must find your way to be enlivened by the story, just like a singer is enlivened by a song. Find the inspiration.
Picture of Anoop and Kim in Scene Study: Dialogue & Impulse