Objective
21st January 2014
Today's lesson began with the usual warm up exercise preparing us physically for the for the lessons objective. Although to begin we with we thought is was to be another session of going over our lines and focusing on our character development, it did not begin all the same. Whilst we had the warm up exercise, and once that had been successful, our teacher turned to all of us and asked a simple question: What is an objective? To which we all had to come up with a decent answer. An objective has a similarity to a goal, where one aims for something and aims to achieve it. (Dictionary Definition: something that one's efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish, purpose, goal, target, etc.) Then returning to the purpose of the lesson being our character development, our teacher asked us another question: What is our characters objective? We knew what the plot intended in our scene and what the purpose of our characters conversation and relationship is, but now we had to understand the objective. For example, I knew my scene (from "The Two Gentlemen of Verona") was about my character, Valentine, informing his best friend, Proteus, that he is in love and it just so happens that Proteus is in love with the same woman. I also knew that the purpose of their conversation was that Valentine was asking Proteus for assistance to escape with the woman he loves, and the characters relationship is simply the two being best friends. So when it came to finding out what the objective is in the scene was rather easy, as the objective of my character and the objective of the scene, was for Valentine to gain Proteus' trust and friendship. This is due to the fact that Valentine need his help in order to escape, however the opposing side of the story is Proteus' objective. What Valentine doesn't know is that Proteus is also in love with the female character in which Valentine speaks of, so as Valentine speaks of how amazing she is and how much he loves her, Proteus' objective is to protest against what Valentine is saying and tries to change Valentine's mind on the whole matter.
I think that learning the objective of the characters was incredibly helpful as we discovered it can assist an actor in developing their character. Using our understanding of the characters objective it can assist in creating the characterisation in how to deliver the lines and how to deliver the physical side of the character. For example I've only begun to learn my lines and have little understanding of how I am going to portray the characteristic of Valentine, however now I now the characters objective I have a new method in which I can project my lines in a way to persuade Proteus to be on my characters side. So I think learning the objective of the characters is very helpful for any actor as it helps to explore ways in which the actor can perform their characterisation and give a pitch perfect performance.
As the lesson drew to an end we spent the final half of the lesson rehearsing what we had already learnt from our scripts and objectives and I began to develop my characterisation. I started with portraying the character as a very positive person and would have his body language facing to the sky, as if to say he is in love. Along with giving a positive reaction to seeing Proteus, his best friend, as to show he has a big secret to tell him, and I wanted to present it like he wanted nobody else to know and he had been desperate to tell Proteus. In the small rehearsal we had, with what I had to offer script and characterisation, it seemed to have a positive reaction from our teacher along with a few downs and problems I needed to work on. But I felt I was on route to giving a decent portrayal of the character of Valentine, for our scene in our Shakespeare assignment.
I think that learning the objective of the characters was incredibly helpful as we discovered it can assist an actor in developing their character. Using our understanding of the characters objective it can assist in creating the characterisation in how to deliver the lines and how to deliver the physical side of the character. For example I've only begun to learn my lines and have little understanding of how I am going to portray the characteristic of Valentine, however now I now the characters objective I have a new method in which I can project my lines in a way to persuade Proteus to be on my characters side. So I think learning the objective of the characters is very helpful for any actor as it helps to explore ways in which the actor can perform their characterisation and give a pitch perfect performance.
As the lesson drew to an end we spent the final half of the lesson rehearsing what we had already learnt from our scripts and objectives and I began to develop my characterisation. I started with portraying the character as a very positive person and would have his body language facing to the sky, as if to say he is in love. Along with giving a positive reaction to seeing Proteus, his best friend, as to show he has a big secret to tell him, and I wanted to present it like he wanted nobody else to know and he had been desperate to tell Proteus. In the small rehearsal we had, with what I had to offer script and characterisation, it seemed to have a positive reaction from our teacher along with a few downs and problems I needed to work on. But I felt I was on route to giving a decent portrayal of the character of Valentine, for our scene in our Shakespeare assignment.
Great work Frank. You have taken on board what I said about relating the work to your personal development as an actor. Keep up the good work.
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