Creating Character

What does it take to create a character? For the Actor, Director and Playwright?

Taking the lead of several posts found both from the thread What is this thing called acting? and the recent poll, Why do we do it?, let us look into what are the different techniques that we all use when creating a character.

Method Acting, Stanislavsky, Grotowski, organic, Shakespearian, what-ever. Maybe it's a process that you have developed yourself. Have you ever been challenged by a part so much that it left a mark you have never been able to shake? Or are you able to create a character and dispose of them like yesterdays old suit?

Tell us your tales and let us all learn form your experience.

Jeff Watkins
Labrug
http://au.geocities.com/labrug

Developing a character has, for me, been a very individual thing. I have not had very specific training as such, just a smattering of various techniques from here and there. In fact most of my ideas are from intuition and experience.

My very first theatrical experience was dreadful and actually put me OFF theatre - it was a Primary School Production of "Oliver". I didn't look back for many years thereafter.

It was then approaching the end of the 1980's when I joined up with a theatrical Youth Group. Here, I re-discovered my interest in theatre and learnt some valuable basics skills - Drawing on your self to find the character. Ultimately, you have to do this in some way no matter what style you follow. The character has to come from the actor in some way, but with no specific method, it was a rather hit-n-miss approach.

My first production after this experience, I played a military man, so I played him stiffly. Sadly, that was my focus and my character became very two dimensional. And so it was for a while apart from the discovery that I was particularly good at comic roles.

I had a wonderful challenge when I took on the role of Lt Witton in "Breaker Morant" - Certainly not comic, it was a character with far more depth and variety then any I had done before. There is this build-up of anticipation and hope from what initially appears to be a hopeless situation. As their plight appears to improve through the play, the state-of-mind of the characters changes. Being able to portray that transition was easy enough. Then everything is turned on it's head when despite their best efforts, their doom is sealed.

This sudden reversal was incredibly hard for me at the time and I spent a lot of time trying to see myself in something similar, high hopes only to have them dashed. I was truly concerned about the part and wanted to portray him as honestly as I could. In the last scene is where it all culminates for Witton. He comes to bid goodbye to his two friends, he tries several times to say something and is interrupted before finally walking out. I did not know how I was doing until one night I was approached by several audience members still wiping their eyes. When you see that you have reached someone on an emotional level, you know you hit the mark.

The most helpful advise I got was during that show. A fellow cast member suggested that I do not overplay the part. Keep it Simple. Speak softly. Play it more internally than on your sleeve and draw the audience into your thoughts. No matter what part I played from then on, I kept to these comments, or at least, tried to.

Absit invidia

Jeff Watkins
Perth based Actor/Performer
who can also sing ... and occasionaly dance
Fight/Sword Choreographer
Virgin Director

http://au.geocities.com/labrug

Growth in the Actor

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