When I first began my journey as an actor over ten years ago, I remember sitting in an acting workshop with one of the most talented and respected acting coaches in the industry. While I learned many different techniques and tips, one of the most important notions he raised was, “By themselves, words have no meaning. If you try to simply act words, you will have a flat and dull emotional performance.”
In order to give words life, you must understand process of exploring and integrating subtext into every word.
Subtext is what gives your words meaning, it’s what provides energy within each sound you make. Without subtext, there would be no emotional state attached to your words – you would simply be making monochromatic sounds.
As an actor, you must find the subtext of your character’s words through uncovering the motivation behind his lines. In order to uncover the motivation of a character you must ask yourself how the specific string of words within a sentence aids your character in accomplishing his simple objective as well as how these string of words relates to the sentence.
You must understand what your character is truly trying to say when he speaks a certain line. For example,
Character A – How much longer do we have?
Character B – A little less than two hours.
Without knowing the subtext of these two sentences, the scenario and emotional weight within these words can be translated into just about anything.
For example, if Character A was waiting to be executed, the emotional weight would be quite different within both characters if the scenario were two college students sitting in on a boring lecture.
As you can see, the actual subtext cannot be found in the words your character is speaking, but rather in the scenario they are currently in. The immediate circumstances and surroundings will directly hint and navigate you to the true subtext of your character.
Although there are many other methods when it comes to exploring the subtext of your character, I have found that the aforementioned is the most accurate of these methods.