If you speak any lines, or do anything, mechanically,
without fully realizing who you are, where you came from, why, what you want,
where you are going, and what you will do when you get there, you will be
acting without imagination.
Our work on a play begins with the use of if as a lever to lift us out of everyday life on
to the plane of imagination. The play, the parts in it, are the invention of
the author’s imagination, a whole series of ifs and given circumstances thought
up by him. There is no such thing as actuality on the stage. Art is a product
of the imagination, as the work of a dramatist should be. The aim of the actor
should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In
this process imagination plays by far the greatest part.
