ABSTRACT
For Nemirovich-Danchenko the ‘second plane’ is the character’s inner, psychological ‘cargo’, that, as a human being, they carry with them into the play. It is made up of the sum total of all the character’s life experiences, all the circumstances of their personal history, and includes all the nuances of their sensations, perceptions, feelings and thoughts. A well-developed ‘second plane’ makes the actor’s reactions to the events of the play more precise, vivid and substantial, it clarifies the motives of everything they do, giving every word spoken the weight of meaning. The ‘second plane’ when carefully devised, the character’s inner world dreamt up and ‘visualised’ by the actor, endows the role with profound content, helps find the right object of attention in the process of communicating, protects the actor from cliches. One of the main tools for acquiring ‘inner cargo’ is the ‘inner monologue’.
