Character Development: Obstacles to the Super Objective
When taking on a role, one of the first exercises is the identification of “the battle” that your character goes through. What’s life without a battle right? When does it ever not happen? The first step then is to identify what it is the character seeks, and then to identify the obstacles to that goal.
The battle deepens by the number and strength of the obstacles to the character’s goal. There are not a finite number of obstacles. The more you understand the objective of the character the more you’ll understand and be able to see the obstacles. And vice versa, the more you understand and see the obstacles, the more deeply and clearly you’ll understand the objective. Identifying obstacles is creative work. If the actor doesn’t see the obstacles, they’re simply not there. To bring your role to life – find the obstacles.
In the accompanying video the actors are doing this first exercise of recognizing the obstacles to the Super Objective of their character. You can see the roles come alive in them as they list these obstacles. Thank you Laura Clarke, Yvonne Benoit, Keith Barrett, Ilya Ouhalov, Nattan Revy, and Josh Cronkhite.