BWW Blog: Tara Folio of Auburn University - Every Villain Has a Silver Lining

Not every lesson we learn in our life is engrained into our minds forever. We remember things like "look both ways before you cross the street" and most likely every lyric from all your favorite songs in middle school, but good luck recalling the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem. The same is true for acting, some things we remember, and some we discard because our brain needed to make more room for all the songs from Hamilton (what a hip reference). If there's one acting lesson I have carried with me all of my life, it's this: You cannot hate the character you are playing. Now if you're portraying a wholesome and pure character like "Cinderella" or "Gertrude McFuzz", the task of finding the good in your character is as simple as finding "Horton the Elephant" in a crowd of Whos. The true test of an actor is finding the positive qualities in absolutely devious characters like the "Witch" in Into the Woods or "Orin Scrivello, DDS" in Little Shop. To the outside world these characters seem like the scum of the Earth, but it is the actor's job to closely read into the character and discover the motivation behind the character's dastardly deeds.

In my opinion, Assassins is possibly the best musical to flex your villain muscles. This musical is chock full of murderous villains; or is it? In this musical I'm playing the part of "Squeaky Fromme" (for those unfamiliar with this tiny and quirky character, she is a member of the famed Manson Family who attempted to assassinate President Ford). When I first started researching this assassin, it was easy to make snap judgments and assume a number of things about my character (I mean, come on, all I knew was that she was a member of a savage cult and she almost killed a President), but the actress within me knew that it was best to mute the judgmental side of my brain and see what this character had to offer. The more I discovered about Fromme, the more I could relate to her; we both had performance backgrounds and struggled with having a good relationship with our fathers, we both came from loving families, she seemed like a pretty interesting person to me.

Now, the task of not judging your character can be a double-edged sword. Sure, I wanted to understand where Fromme was coming from and her understanding about the world, but I eventually found myself wholeheartedly supporting her, and at one point even defending her cult actions and murderous plans (which made my mother extremely concerned). I had become so entangled in Fromme's view of the world, that I couldn't take any other kind of perspective into account, so essentially I was only looking at half the story.

I guess the moral of this post is, while you are portraying a character, you have to come at his or her situation from every possible angle in order to deliver the best possible performance. Love your story, but don't get lost in the pages (or become a cult member/assassin).

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