A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.
This is the person you think is your antagonist, who ends up being your greatest ally: the person who pushes, criticizes, and challenges you to meet a standard of excellence you might not otherwise achieve.
Remember that when you meet your antagonist, to do everything in a mild agreeable manner. Let your courage be keen, but, at the same time, as polished as your sword.
A villain number is a very valuable thing to have, but if you look at most musicals, one way or another there's an antagonist number.
Well you know, the big trick with 'Saw,' the sleight of hand that you have to pull off is that - spoiler alert - the bad guy, the antagonist, is right there in front of your face, literally.
This character I play on 'OITNB' is an antagonist in a Black Lives Matter storyline, but you need antagonists in order to tell those stories.
I find fight scenes actually more interesting, in a way, than chase scenes because you're watching your character go through this problem-solving process and fight the antagonist mano-a-mano. It's more powerful, more emotional.
Every field piece I did on 'The Daily Show' was a story that lasted five to six minutes. We had a protagonist, we had an antagonist and often put them at odds. We knew the story we wanted to tell before we went in, and often it was about plugging whatever character you have - in this case, a real person - into said part.
I enjoyed needling the press. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't have done it. Writers have rarely played, so as a coach, you have antagonistic feelings about some guy writing up the story of the game who's never even attempted to play it.
I'm having fun opening up. Sort of struggling to get the audience into it. It's good. It makes you fight. Not fight like antagonistic. But fight for what you believe.
You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.
Listen, talk, be respectful of people - and make sure that you have openness to where people are coming from. And you don't do anything that is unnecessarily antagonistic, that is only going to make you feel good because you've done it.
I think there's something antagonistic about bedroom pop. We're reappropriating pop and saying you don't have to be an ex-Disney star to make pop music. You can be from Shepherd's Bush and have spent most of your life listening to the Smiths and still make a pop record.
For the most part, editors no longer view 'Doonesbury' as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend.
You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.
You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.
Specifically choose not to take a GPS. Just create a challenge. You can climb Everest or walk across Antarctica with minimal gear and still have that sense of adventure. But in terms of exploration, Google Earth has this world mapped down to the square foot.
Meteorite hunting is not for wimps. The best places to look are also the coldest and windiest. You need very old ice, and you need wind, lots of it, strong and unrelenting. Antarctica fits the bill.
Antarctica is a very alien environment, and you can't survive here more than minutes if you're not equipped properly and doing the right thing all the time.
The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It's like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.
