During today’s lesson of rehearsals for ‘Junk’, the main focus was for us to know who our characters were inside out. Throughout the first weeks of the rehearsal sessions, we have read through the entire script and are also reading the original novel, from which the play is based off of. Having been given our roles and have had the time over half term to learn our lines, we were asked by our teacher to create a character profile to demonstrate how much we had learnt about our characters, and how much more we need to learn in time for the main performance which isn't too far away from present day. That being said, today's lesson began with a hot seating exercise, the purpose of this exercise was for the actor, playing the role of a certain character, to take a seat in the center of the room, where every other member of the group can ask their individual questions about their character. The purpose of this exercise was, not only to present how much we had learnt about our characters, but to also expand the groups and their own understanding of the character.
The character I was given the role to portray for
this performance was a young teenager character named ‘Tar’. In a previous weeks blog, I had presented Tar's characters
profile and explained what I had learnt from understanding the script through my time learning my lines. Since I'm only portraying Tar in the second act for 'Junk', I have to remember the reasons he is who he is because of certain situations in the past, such as child abuse, and mental and physical violence.
Physicality is essential for an actor when he is performing as his character, as it helps them expand their acting to the next step by making the performance seem more realistic. It also helps to know how their character should act mentally and verbally throughout performance, and making a character profile does help in understanding this. From what I’ve learnt and understood about my character, the impact that these situations would have on Tar's physicality and mental health would be very different from what I've experienced in my life. Tar's physical attributes would be a lazy, self conscious, but also strong and positive person in ways of decision making.This is because Tar has dreams of living a normal life away from public eyes and possibly raising a family of his own with Gemma (Girlfriend in 'Junk'), and the only way he can accomplish that is by keeping a positive attitude around people and also respecting the right people to help gain this dream.
Although it may seem that Tar is a very positive respectable person in this production, there are a few down sides towards this character later on in the script. For example, when we view Tar in a scene from Act 2 with his friend Richard, he comes on being all positive and listening to what Richard has to say to becoming a more aggressive character bringing his mental feelings into his verbal speech, and also seeing Richard as a foe more than a friend. This scene also raises a lot of tension in the performance as the audience can see that taking Junk is changing Tar to the utmost extreme, which makes it more exciting for the audiences eyes as they can watch the same character throughout the whole production change his ways of how he perceives people, first off being nice and friendly, to a more aggressive and violent person. This physical and mental change of mind continues to happen more in Act 2 for 'Junk', since we get to see Tar trying to give up Junk by going to rehab but going back to it from time to time since he has realized that he can't live without it.
As the hot seating exercise came to an end, we then began to continue our rehearsals for 'Junk'. One thing we didn't do however, was a warm-up exercise. But I would consider the hot seating to be the warm-up for this session since we really had to think about who our characters are in the performance, and answering questions about them for some people may have been stressful. But not having a more physical warm-up exercise may have been this sessions downfall, since our bodies weren't physically able to perform at maximum efficiency and there was more sloppiness in some scenes for the performance which caused more retakes to happen for the scene.
But overall, I felt that this lesson was
extremely helpful to not only me, but the whole group equally, as we had an extended
understanding of all of our characters in the
play. This also meant that we could
develop our own characters to a level in which makes the whole plot more convincing and realistic to an audience. It’ll also give us the chance to present how
much we understand about the sub context within the play and if we are all capable
of reflecting a harsh view of this particular kind of life on stage.
A very detailed blog Nathan. Keep up the thorough work!
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