I always say it takes three weeks to know a character and three months to own it. And I think that's probably true of every theater artist. If you really want to see a performance of the show, wait three months.
Interpretation
Understanding and embodying a character in acting requires time and dedication.
This quote emphasizes the importance of time in truly understanding and internalizing a character for a performance. Brian Stokes Mitchell suggests that while initial impressions can be formed in about three weeks, it takes much longer—around three months—to deeply connect with and authentically portray a character, highlighting the dedication and effort required in the art of acting.
In practice
In a workshop on acting techniques, this quote can be shared to encourage actors to commit to their roles.
That's the magic of art and the magic of theatre: it has the power to transform an audience, an individual, or en masse, to transform them and give them an epiphanal experience that changes their life, opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think.
There are some projects where you have to just start doing it, and, after a while, the show starts telling you what it wants to be. You put your spirit in and, after a while, something bigger takes over, and it turns out to be much more fun and creative than what it was at the beginning.
One of the interesting things an artist does is they keep rediscovering things, whether it's a jazz piece or a role you've done for 3,000 performances or a song you're singing for the 3,000th time. My job is to find that spark that keeps it fresh and alive.
The older I get, I realize, 'Man, I'm a very rare bird,' and that's not because of necessarily my talent or ability; it so much depends on luck and just the grace of the universe.
100 years of Indian cinema has happened. Anything you do, feels like it has already been done. The struggle is to find a new and unique idea.
I really think that music itself, being one of the greatest possible vehicles for mass communication, should be probed to its extremes, to see how effective it can actually become, which is one of the reasons why I became also interested in presenting political points of view.
It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.
All fiction comes from a little bit of reality, otherwise it would have no relevance. The fun is in innovation, take something real like this fair, and make it something larger than life.
All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
The actor must use his imagination to be able to answer all questions (when, where, why, how). Make the make-believer existence more definite.
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