What your Character Never Says
and Why you have to hear it

What is subtext and why is that important for the actor?

This is part of my series on creativity and specifically, performance skills for the actor.

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What is subtext?

Questions about Acting: I'm not sure I understand what subtext is or how to create that in my characters....what is subtext, exactly?

Answers about Acting: You hear a lot about subtext in acting school. Basically, subtext is what is going on under the words, or besides the words. A lot of times, the subtext doesn't even agree with the words and is often more interesting that way. You have no doubt experienced this type of subtext in your own life. One very common example is when you ask someone how they are and they say "fine" but you know, you just know, they are not fine. How do you know? Because their internal dialogue or monologue creates changes in their body that relate to how they are truly feeling.

An actor required to relay any strong emotion without words must make the situation real enough internally to affect a believable and organic change in their demeaner, posture, facial expressions, breathe and tone of voice, to create subtext that an audience can pick up on and understand.

I read somewhere (could have been in Michael Chekov's book on acting which I recommend highly) that an actor once had to play a man with an unspecified mental disorder. So, he created a character who was afraid of pictures.

Of course, this phobia was never addressed in the script. It was known that the man was insane but no one knew why he would suddenly be taken by fear or paranoia. It would happen when he got too near a picture or saw a picture, etc.

By having this subtext for the man, the actor could justify irratic behavior for his character in unlikely times and keep the character fresh. It might not be every time he looked at a picture but only if he saw it in a certain light or got too close to it, etc.

A person could be afraid of people breathing on him, afraid of dirt on fabrics like curtains, seat cushions, etc. Perhaps a character is afraid of entities only he or she can see, and then decide when they will enter the room during the role.

These sorts of unspoken choices can really flesh out a character.

Another form of subtext is where the actor must convey, without words, that something is going on within them that is emotionally rich.

In order for the audience to connect with and believe that an inner struggle or process is occurring, the actor must have some inner point of focus that is real.

The subtext is what the actor is saying, thinking, remembering, imagining or processing, in response to the demands of the scene, which is coloring their reactions in the scene.

I remember coaching a professional story-teller once. She was talking about a particular house that had meaning to her.

I stopped her and asked her what the house looked like. She didn't know. Because she didn't know, I didn't believe there was a house.

Once she called the house forward in her imagination and could see the rocking chair on the porch and the indentation in the wood behind it from having been rocked on for decades, and the white shutters, and the willow trees blowing in the breeze in the front yard, then I saw something real happening to her face. I believed her then.