we must bring our own sense of what is meaningful to the work: we must find the space where the character’s “why” overlaps the most strongly with our own. This is why acting should be physically exhausting. Because the actor’s body, her struggles, his hopes, their attention and love are the fuel that keep the fires of tension burning.

Suddenly the scene took us somewhere and the characters had been changed by the end of it. By investing more fully in an immediate goal that I felt capable of achieving, every move my partner made was important to me: it told me how close I was to getting what I wanted.