Give your attention somewhere to go.
Attention and the target
You are in the middle of a scene and suddenly begin watching yourself. You monitor your face, judge your feeling, and wonder whether anyone believes you. The more carefully you inspect your acting, the harder it becomes to act. Director and writer Declan Donnellan gives you a sustained way to investigate that trap. In The Actor and the Target, Donnellan examines the actor's attention and the world the actor perceives.
Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod founded Cheek by Jowl in 1981. Their partnership developed an international directing and design practice across languages and dramatic traditions. Donnellan's work includes Shakespeare and European classics, productions at the National Theatre, and work in theatre, opera, ballet, and film. His writing on acting grows from the practical problem of helping actors bring a performance to life.
Life and work
Before his theatrical career, Donnellan studied English and law at Cambridge and was admitted to the Bar.
At the National Theatre, Donnellan directed Fuenteovejuna, Sweeney Todd, and both parts of Angels in America. His directing and design partnership with Ormerod continued through Cheek by Jowl, alongside workshops and teaching across countries. The Golden Lion awarded in Venice in 2016 recognized this body of work. These productions and teaching encounters form the professional background to the books.
The Actor and the Target and the later The Actor and the Space, published in 2024, continue the same investigation: how acting changes through the relationship between attention, the surrounding world, and the demands of a scene. Read them together to follow the development of that inquiry. You can take it seriously without turning every useful sentence into a universal rule.
What a target gives you
What are you actually attending to? Start there. You might be attending to a person, something you need that person to do, or a possibility that suddenly appears in the encounter. A target is a focus outside your self-inspection. You can then ask what changes in your behavior when the perceived situation changes. Instead of taking a continuous inventory of your effectiveness, you have something to respond to.
Imagine that your partner is about to leave before hearing you out. You can try to perform desperation. You can also attend to the hand reaching for the door and the remaining chance to be heard. The second investigation gives you concrete information. You may interrupt, bargain, simplify, or abandon a beautiful sentence because there is no time for it.
You need not confuse this with staring harder. Attention includes what you understand, fear, anticipate, and hope for in the situation. Nor does an outward focus prohibit an inner life. The practical question is whether your inner activity keeps you involved in the encounter or seals you inside a private inspection booth. You can feel a great deal and still be unavailable to your partner. You can feel very little at first and become involved through the action.
How you use the question in rehearsal
Choose a brief scene and identify the moment at which you begin managing your appearance. What has your partner just done? What possibility has appeared or disappeared? Return to that event and play the passage again. You are not required to produce a particular feeling. You are investigating whether a clearer perception gives your next action a reason.
Keep your observations concrete. If your note is that the second version felt better, ask what made it better. Did you hear a refusal sooner? Did you allow an unexpected answer to change your plan? Did you stop delivering a prepared emphasis after the circumstances changed? These questions make your rehearsal review useful. You can compare actions and attention without issuing a verdict on your talent.
What you carry forward
Donnellan's international practice also gives you a reason to remain curious about how a scene becomes legible across languages. Your choices live in bodies, relationships, timing, space, and text. No single one of those replaces the others. You can let the work challenge a habit of treating acting as an isolated emotional event taking place somewhere behind your eyes.
Read the complete books for the developed arguments. Use the questions here to begin your own rehearsal investigation. Your useful question remains immediate: what is happening in the world of this scene, and what does it make possible or necessary for you now?
Read further: Declan Donnellan's biography and work at Cheek by Jowl.