Character exercise

In today’s session we did a character exercise that looked our characters physicality’s and how we can apply these to our performance. We did this by exploring our character as a caricature and exaggerating them to the extreme. This allowed us to really discover and learn about our characters, the way the walk and how they hold their bodies, doing this in an exaggerated manner really heightened their movement making it clear to us as actors. I found that this really allowed me to feel the weight being balanced in my legs and for me to be heavier as a man, doing this exaggerated highlighted just where and how the weight was balanced in my legs so that when I toned it down I could still be aware of how to move just in a more subtle way. It also made me think about where I lead with my body as my character and how I hold myself, I found that even though I was being lead by my hips/knees and my legs where very prominent in the movement, my upper body was still very stiff and upright. I think that this shows how his masculinity is rooted in his hips and legs but his status and power is shown through his upper body and his head held high shows how because of his status he looks down on the convicts.

I found that through this exercise I went to the stereotype of my character – the upper class, white, male of the time. Interestingly I had tried to stay clear of the stereotypes as I wanted to keep him original and his characterisation individual. I think that this shows that the stereotype might have some truth in it and where it developed from and that the pompousness and arrogance displayed in his movement could be a small part that I could layer into my characterisation. I think that because of their status it was common for the upper class characters to have the stereotypical harshness and confidence and that I could use this in a way to create my character while still making him an individual.

While we were creating these exaggerated characters we looked at developing some idiosyncrasies for our characters that could be taken into the performance. The first one that I developed was a twitch in the face that included a sniff. I found this one as in the new world I felt that my character would be interested in the new sights, sounds and smells and that this was one way to emphasis how different the world is to him. Also I found that this was a type of way of looking down at the convicts and implies that their dirt repulses him. Another one was the development of a props and I felt that my character would use a pipe, I found that this emphasises the thinker quality within my character. By using a pipe I found that it opened my character to explore the way that he thinks and the pleasure he takes in enjoying thinking. The last one that I found was how I held my hands. I felt that when I was walking and hand my hands either behind or in front of me there was a certain movement/rubbing in them to show how he considers and thinks a lot. Personally I found that it shows the more academic side to my character and his love of books and reading. I moved my hands as if there was something absent, such as a book, this allowed me to explore the inner love for reading and education is important to my character.

I found that doing this exercise was really useful as it allowed me to connect to the physicality of my character and to develop small personal movements that define him. I think that this is really useful as if I ever feel disconnected to my character on stage I can just revert to these small movements that I find define him and reconnect to him on a physical level which leads to a psychological and emotional level. I also think it allowed me to make lots of really strong, clear decisions to my character so that I was becoming more independent in my thinking about him and making him my own and bringing him off the page.