'Shakespeare's House Party' Character Development Assignment

‘Shakespeare’s House Party’ Character Development Document

 

Character Name’s With a Short Description:
For this Shakespearian assignment, I play two different characters from two plays. The first character is Proteus from the play ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, whom I have had the most development time with so far, he is an easier character to understand in terms of lines being given, and I have watched several examples from other interpretations of the same play. For my part in this play, Proteus, as a character, is deeply emotional when it comes to loving a woman, when he realizes that his friend Valentine also loves the same woman, he becomes angrier at his friend and when he realizes he is actually serious about loving this woman, that is when Proteus becomes more calmed and is more surprised than angry at him. And when it comes to Valentine asking Proteus to help woe this woman, Proteus would then enter a sarcastic state where he says he will help him eventually but realistically giving himself more time on how to deal with this situation.

My second character is Puck from the play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, for this character, I have spent less time on in terms of rehearsal time and I haven’t watched as much examples than Proteus. Puck is a Housecarl who is sent on a quest by the King of the land to find a specific flower, which when its scent is spilled into someone’s eyes, makes them fall in love with the person they first lay eyes on.  For my part in this play, Puck is watching a rehearsal whilst drinking beer and smoking until he says his lines in the script. For my part in the performance so far, I would click my fingers to stop time and enter the Actors Scene to announce my lines. In terms of rehearsal time, we haven’t yet reached the end of the Actors Scene, so the development process for Puck isn’t completed fully. Like Flute, which is another character in the Actors Scene, Puck can also be a very background kind of character to witness, as for starters, he doesn’t have much to say in the Actors Scene, but closer to the end of the scene, he comes out to be one of the main characters of the scene.

First Idea’s I Had about My Character’s:

For Proteus, I imagined him, at first, being a greedy person who normally gets what he wants, whenever he wants it. I thought this when we had read through our script for the first time, and I could see the anger in his words as he was talking to Valentine. Throughout my performance in ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, Proteus changes his emotional feelings more than a few times, this ranges from being happy to see his friend Valentine, to becoming more confused when Valentine started talking about loving this woman and fantasizing moments with her, this evidently made Proteus angry since the loves the same woman and thinks he deserves to have her, but then Proteus realizes that Valentine really loves this woman and wants to spend the rest of his life with her, but then Valentine asks Proteus to help woe her which is when Proteus starts becoming sarcastic and says that he is currently busy but he would return to Valentine when he is free.

For Puck, I thought of him being very cocky and very surreal when he says his lines, and that he also has a weird way of picturing situations when something happens. My part as Puck in the performance requires me to be sitting on a bench next to one of the other actors, and at certain moments, I would whisper into the ear of the actor telling him to be sarcastic with his words as one of the other actors in the scene is being very serious about the rehearsal session and is recommending idea’s to the director himself whilst they run through their lines.

 Research I Have Looked up on Both Character’s:

For both of my characters, I have looked up on YouTube, different interpretations of the same play to see what the directors were doing in terms of character development. As I have said before, Proteus was the character I had spent more time on in terms of ‘embodiment’. For the ‘Lads in Love’ scene in ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, The actor’s playing the same roles as me and my partner in the production are doing things very similar to what we have been doing in our weekly rehearsal sessions. The only thing different in our scene opposed to theirs is that we use a lot of levels for both character’s, there is one part in our scene when Valentine is fantasizing about the woman he and Proteus both love, and he then goes to lie on the floor being very cheerful and happy he has found someone to fall in love with, and then Proteus would stand up after sitting down and cast his eyes into Valentine’s whilst building up anger and confusion in his word’s. I came up with this idea in our rehearsal sessions since I think that doing this is very effective, as I think it shows more of a relationship between the two characters since realistically, they are both best friends.

For Puck, it became more of a challenge, since most of the production’s I had managed to discover only lead to them doing the same thing; I later found that their interpretation was very different to ours for ‘The Actors Scene’. For their interpretation, Puck is taking part in the rehearsals for the Actor’s Scene, but since Puck doesn’t say any lines at all until later on, it became more awkward to watch. I find our interpretation to perform better since having Puck on stage drinking beer and smoking would make the audience wonder for a while what my real purpose is for the scene, until it comes to my entrance to the scene where I would click my fingers to create a freeze frame for the other actors in the scene and I would announce my lines after.

Development of Character in Modern Day Whilst Using Shakespearian Language:

Being honest, I haven’t had much thought about my character’s in Modern Day, other than our intro sequence for our production being shown, which requires all of the actor’s to perform a dance routine in choreographed motion. For this dance we are to still be performing as our character, we were to think, whilst dancing, how our characters would dance if they were doing it and not us. This dance was rehearsed recently, and I haven’t had much thought as to how my character would dance at a house party other than what I am currently doing in this dance routine, which is more my actions opposed to my character. It is also harder for me to do since I have two characters to perform as, since the scene after the dance intro is the ‘Actor’s Scene’ for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, I thought logically that I should be dancing how Puck would be dancing, but since I have had more character development on Proteus, I danced as him instead. This made me feel more comfortable whilst learning the routine, since I won’t be thinking how Puck would dance right off the bat as opposed to Proteus.

How Has The Themes of The Plays Reflected In My Characterisation:

For the ‘Lads in Love’ scene that I am performing from ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, the theme is obviously a comic romance, but our interpretation of this scene does build up anger with my character along with other emotional statuses. Timing is a key element in this scene since Proteus is constantly, throughout the whole scene, confused as to why his best friend Valentine is suddenly
Deeply in love with this woman and has become a complete stranger to Proteus and doesn’t like how this has happened. For the 'Actor's Scene' in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', I am to perform as a prankster for the whole of my performance in this production, later on being cleared to the audience that the House Party was one huge prank being pulled on all who had arrived. This made me think of Puck being some 'Creatively Mad Person', even though he may not appear so in other interpretations of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', but this is what makes our production much more unique and entertaining to an audience.

Personal Creative Acting Decisions:

For this production, I have come up with a lot of creative decisions to use for development towards my characters. For example, each time I would perform my lines in a rehearsal session at college or I do my own performance at home in my own time, I would perform differently, both physically and mentally. I choose to do this because having the performance being different every time I perform it would make it so I don’t get bored of the performance as often. This decision, in my opinion, might make other actors think weirdly about my performance, but it gives me the opportunity to come up with different personality changes for my characters, and if they happen to like another personality better than the other, I would act as that kind of person or I would conjure up another completely different way to act my characters both physically and mentally. These acting decisions, I feel, are unique to me since I do try to differentiate how I would deliver my lines every time I do a line run either at college or in my own time. I use this to help me in rehearsal sessions also, as each time I perform; the lines I announce are spoken differently, making the process much more exciting and less of the same thing over and over, and it also helps me decide what I want my character to act like for the final production. In my time during this unit, I have not seen any of my fellow actors do this, which I feel is better for me overall, since it does make me more unique than the other actors and actresses in the group.

Descriptions of Exercises/Techniques Used For Development:

Before each rehearsal every week, we perform a set of exercises and practise useful techniques to help us with our acting and make us have more embodiments with our characters. These exercises will range from Vocal warm-ups, to help project our voice more efficiently. General body stretches, to get our bodies/muscles working more effectively. To also help towards our character development, all actors would do a complete line run, with no physical work added on to it, generally this will help us learn our lines but our teacher is also grading us as to if we have learnt our lines according to a deadline which was set for us. When it did come to us actually performing our lines physically, whilst we were doing the run through, either the teacher or students watching will come up with ideas as to how we can use physicality in a certain scene, for example, in the ‘Lads in Love’ scene for ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, there is a moment were my character Proteus is angry at Valentine after he points out that the woman that they both love is not with anyone currently and says the line ‘she is alone’ in which Proteus would reply ‘Then let her alone!’ which is followed by a slap on the head, Proteus does this to show that he is angry at his best friend and that he is trying to get his mind straight since Valentine has become so much different and it’s like Proteus doesn’t know him anymore. These exercises/techniques do help for both of my characters, and as long as we do them each week before our rehearsals, in my opinion the performance will keep getting better and better.

Voice and Movement Techniques Used:

For our rehearsals in the 'Shakespeare's House Party' unit, we have come across a variety of different techniques that is useful for both our voice and movement whilst on stage. These techniques however, were discovered and revealed by our teacher whilst we were partaking in different exercises before each rehearsal session in the week. For vocal work, we have been saying a rhyme, and for each verse in the rhyme, we use our voice to portray a different personality. For example, using the rhyme we have been using for vocal exercises, "Why fly so high? Said Naughty Nora. Whilst eating an apple, with Zoe the Zebra in the zoo."

The first verse of the rhyme, "Why fly so high", is to be said in a high pitched voice. I found that this verse in particular helped me not develop cracks in my voice, so when it came to my parts in the production, I can say my lines with ease. The second verse, "said Naughty Nora", is to be said whilst blocking our nostrils, this makes our voice sound much deeper but more unusual than before. This verse however, did not in any way make pronouncing my lines easier because I don't see how blocking my nostrils helps with vocal toning, but this may be different for others since my voice is much deeper than other members in my group and maybe would of helped them further than myself. The third verse, "Whilst eating an apple", is to be said in a more 'posh' kind of voice, we had to use the lower part of the throat to properly pronounce this verse correctly.  Making this voice wasn’t too difficult to perform, since I already have a very deep tone of voice and I simply had to put on the pitch we were required to achieve. The final verse, "With Zoe the Zebra in the zoo", is to be said whilst hitting our upper chest, like a Guerrilla, with a very deep tone of voice to accompany the physical activity. Again, this verse was easy to achieve for me, since, as I have previously mentioned, already have a deep tone of voice and this verse wasn’t too difficult to achieve for me because of that reason. For movement techniques, we have to perform a dance routine in our production, we perform this alongside the song 'Let's get this party started' and we have to make sure we are dancing alongside this song in a sort of beat that dancers use when they dance professionally. This beat requires the dancer to count to the number 8 repeatedly over and over until the song ends or the routine is over. The beat comes to play when there is an actual beat in the song that makes it easier to follow the rhythm of the song being played. For this dance routine, we are meant to be dancing as our characters in the production. I have already mentioned which character I am dancing as in this part of the production and why I dance as him opposed to my other character in the performance.

The Key Processes Involved In the Creation of Dramatic Work:

For this section for my written work, I am going to mention all the initial research that has helped me develop my character's, also mentioning my understanding of the Shakespearian text in the script and finally revealing my experience to learn all my lines off by heart.

For my initial research for both my character's, I have already mentioned where I have got my ideas for my character's from, watching different interpretations of the same production to discover similarities and differences in each of the different performance’s. Already mentioning that our interpretations of the 'Actor's Scene' in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and the 'Lads in Love Scene' from 'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona' is far more unique than the productions I have found on the internet to help towards my character development. Understanding the text with all the words William Shakespeare had used in his scripts for the plays we are performing for this production has been very easy for me to understand since I have done my fair share of Shakespeare plays outside School/College in the past with an acting company in Titchfield, having recently done one of Shakespeare's comedies called 'The Tempest'. Predicting that I was going to perform Shakespeare in my Performing Arts course at College, I thought that having a grasp of knowledge on this subject of theatre would help towards any character development and also understanding the script on a first read through of some of the plays I have not yet read or seen being performed. This comes to my final process of development, line learning, this has been very easy for me to memorize, having known the lines already a few days after we were given our scripts for the production, having done this gave me more time to focus on my character's physical activity, how he would move, talk and also express himself with free movement. This has also given me much more time to complete my coursework and my blogs which I post online on Blogger every week after each college day.