“Rear-Wheel Acting: Why Control is the Enemy”

“You don’t drive the role. You hold on and pray.”

Even before I dove headfirst into the Demidov universe — five years deep under Professor Andrei Malaev-Babel — I had a bone to pick with what so many acting techniques peddle as gospel: objectives. You know the ones. Wants. Needs. Super-objectives. The actor’s neatly organized to-do list of emotional errands. My system, my gut, my actual human experience — none of it ever matched what they wanted me to mechanically install.

Sure, I get it. As a dramaturgical tool, objectives have their place. But when they start pretending to be the engine of human behavior — that’s when the wheels fall off. Because in real, exponential human life — the kind an actor must embody — people don’t think like that.

We don’t live in action verbs and tidy tactics.
We live in something messier, darker, funnier, more volatile.
We live in confusion. Desire. Shame. Uncertainty.

Good luck reducing that to a beat sheet.

Here’s how it usually goes in the average acting class:
You’re told to start with a super-objective. Then an objective. Then break it down into actions, emotions, tactics, or through-lines. Answer the five questions. Or seven. Or twenty. Whatever your guru demands.

Then, if you’re lucky, you get to improvise with the scene.
More often? You chop it up:

• Divide the scene into beats.
• Label each beat with a change of thought, mood, or need.
• Slap an action verb onto each one — “to pressure,” “to seduce,” “to uplift.”
• Then force those actions to point at your objective.

And that objective? It better serve your super-objective — or else you’re “not doing the work.”

You might hear: cajole, destroy, pressure, uplift. Or, if it’s the psychological gesture route: push, pull, lift. Or, if it’s another flavor of the same drink: make them feel safe, guilty, loved, wanted.

If you think about it, it’s all the same system. Each version asks the actor to force a focus onto an intention. A goal. A strategy. A controlled point of tension.

But here’s the problem: we don’t live like that.

Take a random Monday morning. You wake up, drag yourself to the IRS office to get a government form. Bad day already. Then the clerk glares at you like you insulted her grandmother. What’s your objective? To uplift? To cajole? To pull her emotionally toward empathy?

No. You’re thinking:

“Fucking Mondays.” “You absolute brick of meat.” “Jesus, why is this my life?”

You don’t think in verbs. You erupt in inner monologues. You boil. You fume. You spiral. You react. That’s the language of living. That’s what the actor must inhabit — not this polished, artificially stratified architecture of goals and tactics.

And don’t get me started on the beat work. Dividing a scene into mini-moods based on where a line seems to shift emotionally is like trying to measure lightning with a ruler. It might help a beginner see that change happens, but it’s not a path to artistry. It’s a taxonomy, not an experience.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not saying objectives are useless. They’re just boring. That’s not an insult — it’s a quote. Vakhtangov himself said it. It’s fine to aim at something. But if you only aim — if you only play the arrow — you miss the point. You need the bow. The tremor in your wrist. The tension in your gut. The reason you picked up the damn arrow in the first place.

And here’s where Demidov saves us. He refuses to break the actor into compartments. He doesn’t ask you to name your hunger. He asks you to enter a space of perception. To empty. To wait. To listen. And to let the unknown move you. Not a goal. Not a choice. Something deeper, older. A ghost under your skin. I also prefer Michael Chekhov any given day, instead of “verbing” intellectually he offers something different through gesture. He doesn’t ask you to just find the need — he asks you to move in a way that awakens the need inside you.He can get more poetic.

And yet — just as the revolution starts to take hold — here come the teachers on Instagram, breathless and wide-eyed in reels and posts, announcing they’ve just discovered fire:

“Objectives are passé! It’s all about expectations now!”
Or worse:
“Don’t focus on the goal to drink… focus on the thirst!”

As if renaming the same dead horse somehow revives it.

I don’t know whether to laugh or scream. Because here’s the twist: when I hear that, part of me wants to stand up and shout “Actually, I love objectives!” Just to be contrary. Just to blow the whole goddamn pendulum off its hinge. But I won’t. Not yet.

Because they still miss the point.

We’re not trying to refine the target. We’re trying to question the entire idea of aiming. What if the thing that drives us isn’t a want or a lack or a need or a goal — but an unconscious belief we’ve never questioned? A hidden wound. A pattern we repeat because we don’t know how to stop. What if we aren’t chasing water — we’re running from fire?

Let me give you a metaphor.

You drive a Nissan. It’s front-wheel drive. Solid. Gets you where you need to go. You drive a Volvo. Same story. Safe. Reliable. Sensible.

Then you sit in a Lamborghini.

Rear-wheel drive. 600 horsepower. The moment you press the gas, it tries to kill you. It wants to spin. To veer. To challenge your illusion of control. You don’t drive a Lambo. You hold on and pray.

That’s what acting should feel like.

Sometimes you don’t even know where you’re going. You just hit the road.

So no — I don’t want your objectives. I want your confusion. Your vertigo. Your half-forgotten dream. I want the thing that drives you when you don’t know why.

That’s what Demidov understood. That’s why I am writing again. That’s why this matters.

Now excuse me, I am hungry, I am trying to concentrate on my hunger, while my objective is to eat, and I will cajole a burger.

Jesus!

— K.F.

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