The Challenge of Performing Non-human Characters

A young actress arrives in the big city eager to audition and begin her career. She has a degree in theatre and is conversant in the principles of good acting. Although she has had a class in stage combat, and plenty of dance classes, the thrust of her training emphasized techniques involving objectives, subtext, and connecting with her emotional core – all the basic techniques of acting developed by Russian actor, theatre director and teacher Konstantin Stanislavki (1863–1938). After some modest success, her first big break comes when her agent calls with an audition for a big budget, high concept Hollywood film. When she gets to the audition the casting agent tells her that they want her to read for the part of Amanda the Android from Planet-X, a prisoner on a planetary penal colony for interstellar miscreants. Amanda the Android possesses a programmed consciousness designed to destroy humanity, and although human looking, Amanda the Android has an electro-mechanical body powerful enough to get the job done.