What does Objective mean?
Objective is what a character wants to achieve or obtain in a scene — the specific goal that drives their behavior and gives their actions purpose and direction. In Stanislavski’s system, identifying the character’s objective is one of the actor’s primary tasks. Objectives should be active (what the character is trying to do, not feel), specific (concrete rather than vague), and achievable within the scene (something the character can genuinely pursue against the other characters). The interplay of objectives between characters — each pursuing their own goal, creating conflict when those goals oppose each other — is what generates dramatic tension.
Example:The acting teacher asked the students to state their character’s objective as an infinitive — ‘to convince,’ ‘to escape,’ ‘to protect’ — ensuring the goal was framed as an action rather than a state of being, which made the performance more dynamic and driven.
Example: The child actor’s coach helped her identify a specific objective for each scene in the script before rehearsal began: ‘to get her mother to let her stay home’ was more useful than ‘to feel understood’ because it gave her a concrete goal to pursue against her scene partner.
Did you know?
Stanislavski used the Russian word ‘zadacha’ — sometimes translated as ‘task’ or ‘problem’ rather than ‘objective’ — to describe this concept, which may give a clearer sense of its active quality. The character faces a specific task or problem in each scene, and the actor’s job is to pursue the solution to that task with genuine commitment. Different translations and interpretations of Stanislavski’s terms have led to significant variation in how his system is taught across different acting traditions.
