By El Ochiis
“What is fueling your character’s desire?” Drilled Elias Dillard of The Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, in London, which specialized in theatre arts training, where I had been offered a non-paid position assisting in production. It was one of those dream jobs that sounded much better on paper than in real life.
“I’m not sure what you mean?” I groaned, with timid insolence, looking down at my script for mercy.
One day, an understudy for a top actor was ill and, another duty got added to my list of unpaid responsibilities - I was asked to read. I read the line like I would have written it, not like the writer had intended. Though my action was met with consternation by the director, my version worked better and he became interested in my work. I was given permission to present to him one of my plays from a series called Splitting Seconds.
“All human activity is prompted by passion - man differs from other animals in one very important respect, he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise.”
“Um?” I choked, trying not to cry. I was young, I had no clue what he was referring to. Affecting the stance of an authoritative figure from one of Dickens’ novels, he gestured for me to follow him to his office, a place that housed leather-bound books that were older than the building itself. He had everything in alphabetical order. Pulling one from the “B” Section, he looked up, then down:
“The great British philosophy, Sir Bertrand Arthur William Russell will help you there, my dear.” He offered, with a hint of condescension.
“I had assumed all philosophers were French.” I acerbically responded, taking the book and spending the next week absorbing it like a sponge.
Bertrand Russell, as he is known, states that there are four infinite desires driving all human behavior:
Acquisitiveness — the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods — is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.
Rivalry — he argues, is in turn upstaged by human narcissism - many men would cheerfully face impoverishment if they could thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.
Vanity — a motive of immense potency. Think, children who are constantly performing some antic, and saying “Look at me.”
Love of power —the most potent of the four impulses, he would argue – is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it’s easy to have glory without power -Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
Which of these will you use to drive your character(s) – which two - or all four of them, if you dare?
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