By Iris Lennox
“Angels are good, demons are bad.”
This was the answer when I asked one of my high school–aged acting students to give me an example of something that is “just one thing.”
“Yep, that’s correct,” I agreed. “Give me another.”
He thought for a moment. “Heaven is good, hell is bad.”
“Yes. Now let’s turn our attention to the horizontal. People, places, and things we can touch and see. Give me an example of something that is just one thing.”
“A car is just a car. A tree is just a tree. This building is just this building. My mom is just my mom.”
I wrinkled my nose when he made the final assertion. A tale as old as time. He stopped and waited for my response.
“Your mom isn’t only your mom. But also, a car isn’t only a car. A tree isn’t only a tree. This building isn’t only a building. Try again.”
A smirk grew across his face. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. Maybe both.
“God is good. The devil is bad.”
I laughed. “That’s right. Why do you think you have to keep going into the spiritual realm to give me examples of things that are just one thing? Angels, demons. God, Satan. Why is that?”
He thought for a moment. “Because even though people go back and forth between those two kingdoms, the kingdoms themselves don’t change. We do, but they don’t.”
It was a good answer.
“When I’m coaching students to play villains,” I said, “one of the first things we talk about is the fact that villains don’t see themselves as villains. They see themselves as heroes.” Michael Shurtleff makes this point in his book Audition when he reminds us that if one thing is present in a scene, the opposite is also present. If Sally hates Peter, she probably also loves Peter. If Simon is grieving Teresa, it’s because he remembers their happiness.
We live in tensions. Between here and there. Then and now. Who we are and who we might be.
Take Walter White in the best series of all time, Breaking Bad. He begins as a high school chemistry teacher. Then comes the diagnosis. The bills. The fear of leaving his family with nothing. He starts cooking meth to provide for them, to secure a future that will outlast him.
And then something shifts.
He discovers he’s good at it. The work begins to fill an empty place inside himself. A need for control, for significance, for power. In one of his most famous lines, Walter White reminisces about his drug-lording days and concludes, “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was really… I was alive.”
Is Walter White a villain? Or a hero? Both?
What makes him a villain? The drug that harms other people? The lies? The control he begins to exert over others? The blood that clings to the money he brings home?
What makes him a hero? The motivations with which he acted early on? The care his son receives? The fact that he’s working to build a future? The moments when he protects the people he loves?
Ask Walter, and he’ll tell you he’s a hero. Especially when he believes his objective is to provide for his family. That is the story he tells himself.
And still, the bodies pile up around him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago:
“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
I turned back to my student.
“Think of your worst moment. A time when you chose to be cruel. Did you allow yourself to realize you were being cruel, or did you try to convince yourself you weren’t that bad?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I justified it. I knew I was wrong, but I made excuses. I compared myself to people who are worse than I am.”
“You chose something dark and still looked for light. What did you do to relieve that tension?”
“I tried not to think about it. Oh! And, I helped more at home. I told people I was volunteering at church. I stayed busy doing good things, so other people didn’t think I was a jerk. I guess I was also trying to switch back into a good person.”
I nodded.
“So you were a villain. And you acted like a hero.”
“Yeah.”
“So you weren’t God or the devil. You were aware of both. And you chose, moment by moment, how to move toward what you wanted while carrying both at once.”
“Yeah.”
The wheels of thought whirred.
Nothing is ever just one thing.
When you’re playing a bad guy, you still have to know what he’s moving toward. Somewhere inside that pursuit, something he recognizes as good is leading him forward.
It’s true on stage. It’s also true off stage.
Iris Lennox 