Week Twenty-Three Part 2: Character Development (Shakespeare)

Character Development

     ‘Shakespeare’s House Party’ is the title of our assignment’s main performance.  The plan is to put a modern twist on three extracts from three of Shakespeare’s comedy plays: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.  My extract scene is from ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’.  The scene is referred to as ‘the lads in love’ where my partner and I have our unique portrayals of the characters Valentine and Proteus.  My character is Valentine.

 

     Valentine is a young gentleman, who, in the play, is respected by his friends.  In this extract scene Valentine has a moment with his best friend, Proteus, where he confesses that he is madly in love.  The whole plot tells us the name of the character that Valentine is in love with; she goes by the name of Silvia.  The purpose of our scene is for Valentine to confess, to Proteus, that he is in love; whereas Proteus is to put doubt into Valentine’s mind and turn him against Silvia.  We learnt when we researched the play that Proteus is in love with Silvia as well.

     To begin with my first impression of this character was that he would be a wide eyed dreamy character.  But as I read on with our scene extract, I was beginning to get the impression that the character was one who always saw his cup as half full.  He was a character who was always happy and never saw a negative in his life or with his friends and family. 

 

     After getting a decent impression of what the character was like, I then turned to do some research into how I could deliver a more accurate portrayal of the character, rather than just a first impression.  After learning the majority of my lines, I analysed the written text that was in the Shakespearean language, and studied it so it made sense in my own head; I would know how to deliver each word.  Then I began to think how it could be portrayed.  I understood the main characteristics of a man deeply in love and then I began to work with the script to see how well both would collide and work together. 

 

     So a young man in this position, knowing full well that Silvia is in love with him as well, would be very dreamy, this would show that he is constantly thinking about her.  This alongside the positive atmosphere around the character, as if to physically deliver the message “yes I’m in love”, and he could also be trying to make everyone feel happy for him so others can support him.  Hence Valentine’s objective in this scene extract is to gain Proteus’ trust and friendship.  So my research method was analysing the script to see how the character could be portrayed and it also helped me to understand what the purpose of this extract scene is. 

 

     The next step was for each members of the group to get a decent understanding of how to develop our characters into the modern day, whilst speaking in Shakespearean language.  The idea of our performance was to create a house party, in the modern day world.  Various scenarios with different people occur and in these are the extracts from our chosen Shakespearean comedies.  For example, for the group who have the extract scene from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ they have the responsibility of recreating the scene with the actors rehearsing in the forest.  But to make it more realistic, they have the job of portraying it as if they were just a group of drunken friends who are just showing off at the party.  Whereas my scene extract was more interesting to develop towards the modern day scenario. 

 

     I could imagine and understand what this scene would be like if the plot and language was modernised.  This scene would be like two young lads, who are the best of friends, having a chat about the girls they fancy.  However that wasn’t the case.  Because the true meaning of this scene is to show that these two characters are truly best friends, and they have to address the fact that Valentine is truly in love.  So I decided there was to be no change in the characterisation, as we had to keep the fact, and address it through the physicality of our performance, that these two lads are in fact best friends. 

 

     As for the written dialogue, I liked the fact that we kept to the Shakespearean language, because if we were to change it to modern day language there is a possibility that the audience might become less interested in the performance.  An example of a Shakespeare play being modernised is the motion picture adaptation of ‘Romeo + Juliet’.  In the movie we have the same story and the same dialogue, except with the big twist of setting it in modern society, with the use of gun as weapons instead of swords.  So I turned to this example for inspiration as to think of how they succeeded with the movie and how I could make a similar transformation with this extract.  In this case I thought it would be similar, by the sense of adding in our own modern clothes.  Also, to present the physicality perspective so the audience knew it was modern, whereas the dialogue was to be untouched. 

 

     However I thought the most important thing was how to present the lines.  Instead of delivering with a proud majestic Shakespearean voice, I thought if we were to use our natural conversation voices, then it would be more realistic.  We would show the friendship between Valentine and Proteus from both the physical and verbal side of the modern day adapted performance.

 

     We explored methods to make the scene more realistic and interesting in a modern day adaptation, but another key factor for the actors was to explore the themes that reflect on our own characterisation.  How can we relate to these characters?  This step was very interesting because I felt I could relate to these characters in these circumstances. 

 

     Our extract scene is very comedic, which helped me and my partner to create this scene.  To have two friends in the scenario in which they both are in love with Silvia leads to tension, but give a feeling of comedy drama.  On the comedy side of the performance, my partner and I worked well together during rehearsals to see how we could present the friendship and deliver comedy timing, to entertain the audience.  This was all to be shown through our physicality, gestures towards one another to show the friendship, and voice tone to show the jokes and comedy of the scenario.  But we then turned to the drama side of the scene.  We wanted to present the reality of the tension; what was happening isn’t just for entertainment, it is true, from the characters perspective.  So throughout the scene Valentine confesses his love for Silvia, whereas Proteus is just putting doubt into his own and Valentine’s mind, as if to say “yeah right, very funny!”  But as the scene draws to an end Proteus metaphorically hits the wall and realises that Valentine speaks the truth.  Now this was fascinating because this is what makes comedy dramas work, in the presentation of a decent plot with comedic scenarios and comedy timing but it draws on the reality of the situation. 

 

     An example of this is the comedy television series ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ where the stories take place in World War I and deliver some hilarious scenes, as if to say it was all a big joke.  But, at the end of the series, when they go over the front line, the audience are suddenly hit with the reality of war and the fact that it isn’t a joke any more. 

 

     All of this, I feel, affected, yet helped my characterisation and saw sorrow towards Proteus.  Using the Meisner technique, an acting technique to focus on the other person, I was able to see the story from Proteus’ point of view.  With a hint of anger, but disappointment as Proteus then realises that Valentine is truly in love with Silvia, which is more than Proteus can offer.  As for my characterisation of Valentine, I feel as if it has to end with him coming near to tears to suggest that he fears that Proteus thinks it is all a big joke, when he is being serious.  This all should give an accurate portrayal of the scenario with dramatic tension, comedy timing and reflect the drama.

 

     When embodying the character of Valentine on stage, during rehearsals, I felt I could relate to this character.  Beginning with the fact that Valentine sees the world with a positive attitude, I like to view the world with a similar attitude.  Whilst I did have use of the Meisner technique, to focus on the other character, I did also reflect on my own character.  I was able to look at my own relationships and draw on the feelings of excitement, mixed with confusion and self-doubt, but with the over whelming joy of wanting to spread the news with my friends.  Knowing what Valentine was going through I was able to give a relatable portrayal on stage to show these emotions from another characters point of view.

 

     Another key factor to this assignment was our originality, to test to see how creative we could be in making these scenes realistic to a modern day adaptation.  To begin with my acting decisions were to learn my lines using a new technique.  I learn to speak the lines aloud repeatedly then I would be able to automatically speak the lines aloud on stage.  Once I learnt the lines I focused on how to deliver the lines in a comedic and realistic way, to reflect on the modern day society.  Whereas with the physicality side of the performance I looked at the scene being just as the friends meeting as the party draws to an end.  So the characters would have been exhausted from interacting with other people in the party.  So, to begin with, I imagined they would just be wandering and collapsing on any piece of furniture they could find.  Then when they see each other, we pictured it as if they were best friends and they hadn’t seen each other for a while, so they are pleased to meet.  Valentine was to be the most excited, as he is alone with a friend, he feels, he can trust and finally he gets the chance to tell Proteus about the woman he loves. 

 

     As Valentine delivers his lines about his new love, I thought it would be good to show it through his continuation of wandering the room staring into space, thinking about her, and also give a slight physical mime of what the joys of being in love are like.  But then as the scene draws to an end, I think it should be shown through a negative, so Valentine would look down to the floor as to physically present that he fear that Proteus thinks of him and his being in love is a big joke.  But then lifts his chin when Proteus sees kindness towards Valentine at the end of the scene as Proteus agrees to help him.

 

     The process would have been a lot slower if we didn’t have the assistance of our new techniques to discover that there are other ways to give a decent and near accurate performance.  Such as learning the Meisner technique, this all about the other person, this helped extremely.  In the way that it helped to discover both characterisations as we looked into presenting the characters friendship. 

 

     But the technique that I thought was the most helpful was “discovering the objective”.  Discovering the objective helped us to learn what do our characters want?  So from reading the script I discovered that Valentine’s objective is to gain Proteus’ friendship so Proteus will assist Valentine in running away with Silvia.  Whereas Proteus’ objective was to do the opposite, to plant doubt into Valentine’s mind and make him feel differently about Silvia.  These two techniques in particular helped me to develop the characters physicality on stage and towards Proteus, as well as it helping me understand the plot by seeing things from both perspectives.  

 

     Keeping the Shakespearean language was an essential part of both the assignment and the performance.  It helped in the assignment because it helped us as actors to understand the vocabulary of the past, and see the evolution of the English language.  But also essential to the performance because it made it an official extract from the Shakespeare comedy which was more realistic for the audience.  However to begin with, many people in the group did not fully understand the script text, as well as not fully understanding of how to pronounce certain words.

 

     Our voice preparation came across in our warm up exercises.  At the beginning of every lesson we had a quick warm up session, which prepared us for physical movement and vocal work.  The vocal warm up was simple to prepare us with pronunciation, by our teacher giving us rhymes and tongue twisters.  This was all very helpful because it prepared us to pronounce each word in a tone which made it clear so we could understand each word; we then reflected this technique onto learning our script.  We then pronounce certain words that were new, from our point of view, but old in the English text so we had to understand how to pronounce the words in the correct way so the audience understand what we’re saying.

 

     Another step in learning what our script text meant was a helpful website, our teacher showed us, which translates the Shakespearean text to a modern day, written text.  Thus making it easier for us to understand what is happening in our scenes.  But once we understood what the unique words meant we then were capable of being able to pronounce the words and deliver them in the style which showed we understood the subtext.  We were also able to deliver a comical performance making the speech on stage intriguing and equally entertain as the physical performance. 

 

     In the last half of my script, both characters see the reality of the situation, so the speech tone loses its comedy and turn to a deeper tone to show my character Valentine isn’t joking and wants to start taking the situation more seriously.  So the vocal technique in the performance was to begin the extract scene with a comedic tone to entertain the audience, and then change the tone to break it down to the drama of the scene.

 

     As for the movement techniques we used, the warm up exercises helped us to prepare for the day’s session; whereas our performance movement was our own choice.  An example of this excellent physical acting would be the character ‘Bottom a Weaver’ from the play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.  This character is supposed to be really up himself, in the way he thinks he’s the best actor in the group of actors, so his movement on stage would be to present his pride and confidence amongst others.

 

     So I had to analyse my character in order to get an idea of how to present the characters movement on stage.  The first thought on my character Valentine was him being a man who always saw his cup as being half full, so my first instinct was to present Valentine as a very positive man with a movement around the stage to show happiness and confidence.  The confidence was based around the fact that he is in love and that he is with his best friend, at the point in the scene extract.  So my movement technique in the performance was to present a man who was very positive about the world and desperate to tell his friend the news of his new found love, all to be shown in his passing around the stage with a positive attitude.  Also a use of mime movement to signify he is over the moon and excited for what the future might have in stall for him.

 

     The key process involved in the creation of the dramatic work was to create the character and develop it for the main performance.  To begin with I thought the play ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ was to have a more comedy tone to the entire plot.  However, as our production session went on, I began to discover that there are more layers to the plot. 

 

     We had a lesson in which we had many scene extracts from the three comedy plays and our task was to put the scenes in order.  This was so we could have a decent understanding of all three plots.  Then after I’d analysed my scene extract I was able understand what the characters are talking about and what their friendship is like; leading me to develop my own character and see the plot from both perspectives.  Also seeing the dramatic tension in the plot with both Valentine and Proteus loving Silvia, I was able to develop the scene to show both genres mixed within the scene extract.  This made the scene more comical by showing Valentine and Proteus’ friendship with use of comedic stage movement and speech delivery.  But showing the dramatic tension when Proteus realises that Valentine is truly in love with Silvia.

     So, in summary, over time learning my lines and analysing the characters through plot summaries and learning objectives, I think that the character of Valentine is to be presented with an uplifting tone which turns to the reality of the situation.  This will make the scene entertaining and intriguing for the audience.  To have the opening of the scene very comical and up lifting and see the characters emotions turn to the dramatic and emotional.  This will show the truth and point out the elephant in the room, that Valentine is telling the truth.