'13' Blog 3: The Character, their Objectives and the Stage Craft

13: The Character, their Objective’s and the Stage Craft

Monday 6^th, Wednesday 8^th and Thursday 9^th October 2014

 

     Week three of our work towards our first production assignment; of Mike Bartlett’s play ‘13’, we now began looking into our own characters into more detail.  As well as looking into how we could produce this particular play’s stage craft.

My Character

     At the end of week one in our work for ‘13’, we began the audition process for our performing roles.  I personally admired, and auditioned for, the character ‘John’.  From our read through of Act One, I really liked the sense of mystery based around ‘John’s’ character traits, and I was eager to take on this character role and bring him to life for our main performance.  Thankfully I did receive the character role as the audition process came to an end, but it was my job to portray this character in the first two acts of the play, whilst another cast member was to take over for the concluding acts of the play.

     So this week we, as a class, began exploring our characters and gain little details which we can expand upon in our characters profiles.  Me and my fellow cast member came together and discussed what we think is essential in ‘John’ characterisation, and how we could present him on stage.

     Through a series of bullet points we discussed what stands out in ‘John’s’ characteristics, what clothing he would wear, and what his mysterious origin story would be.  The points we came up with were:

·         ‘John’ is Confident – we both knew that ‘John’ is extremely confident in showing his opinion on certain matters, speaking as a leader in a large group of people, and beginning a series of protests to ensure a bright future.

·         ‘John’ is Patient – we agreed that ‘John’ is perfectly willing to wait for as long as possible in order to achieve his goals, and helps out with many people to gain him more followers.

·         ‘John’ is Considerate – linking back to the previous point that ‘John’ is patient enough to help others to pass the time.  ‘John’ is considerate to others so nobody has a bad day.

·         ‘John’ is Fierce – we believed that there is an element of aggression within ‘John’ to which fierceness is shown as he will do almost anything to see his ambitions come to life.

·         ‘John’ is Calculated – my fellow cast member suggested that ‘John’ would have strong intelligence within his character traits.  So we could demonstrate that ‘John’ is constantly in thought about what he is going to do, whether it is about the day ahead of him, or if it concerns his ambitions.

     I found these points to be extremely helpful.  It gave us a rough idea of how we could present and explore this character during the rehearsal process.  As well as explore in further detail for when we write our character’s profile.

     For this next series of bullet points we discussed what type of clothing ‘John’ would wear.  The pieces of clothing we agreed on were:

·         A Brown Coat

·         A Red Scarf

·         A Black Tie

·         A Pair of Boots

·         A White Collared Shirt

·         and A Digital Watch

 

     One statement in particular that we agreed on, to summarise ‘John’ fashion sense would be “simple, yet formal”.  In a way I imagined the character would have similarities, clothing wise, to ‘Lee Childs’ fictional novel character ‘Jack Reacher’.  In the ‘Jack Reacher’ novels we find the main protagonist travelling with little to no money, and owning only one set of cloths.  Thereby showing his commitment to his work, which I found to be rather similar to this character ‘John’.  I figured it would be could to show ‘John’s’ commitment to his ambitions and he would have no time to worry about something simple like his cloths.  Therefore I liked our decisions to keep these particular clothing to keep it nice and simple, yet very effective.

     But when it came to ‘John’s’ origins story, we had to think outside the box and see if we could create something original, but strongly linked into the plays storyline.  With little time remaining the bullet points we took down were:

 

·         Well Educated – linking back to our summary of ‘John’s’ personality traits, we pictured ‘John’ as an intelligent young man.  So we agreed that it would be worth creating an origins story where he was a well-educated boy with religious parents, all the more giving him purpose in his anti-war protest near the climax of the play.

·         ‘John’ hides from his past – after finishing reading the entire script of ‘13’ we both discovered that every time a character asks ‘John’ where he was, years before the play was set, ‘John’ tried to move onto another subject.  Therefore we concluded that he had seen some graphic and violent places and people, and add the element of fear into our performances.

     Unfortunately this was all we managed to write up, for ‘John’s’ origins story, as the session came to an end.  However this did give us a rough ideas of ‘John’s’ past and character traits and particularly how we could present this on stage.  Giving us an advantage for when we would begin the rehearsal process.  Plus I did feel a sense of interest and eagerness to expand on these points for my character’s profile.

 

Stage Craft

     Last week we began to look at potential staging strategies, such as a circular formation and the ‘Greek Chorus’, and see if we could adapt the script using these staging’s to our advantage and expand our storytelling of ‘13’.  Through practical exercises, early rehearsals, we use the ‘Greek Chorus’ technique to show citizens reactions towards the political character ‘Ruth’, and her speeches.  I thought this was a useful exercise as it began our understanding of the usage of the ‘Greek Chorus’ and how we could use this method to our advantage in the play.

     It was this week however that we began to look into rehearsing our own group scenes and see if we could use any new stage craft strategies, that we explored, to a point where the scene is exception and detailed.

     So previously we explored the ‘Greek Chorus’ and potentially a circular formation on stage.  But this week our lecturer introduced another stage craft formation, which I and my performing group used to perfect our scene.

The Plated Stage

     Using our imagination we had to picture a large plate being balanced from a centre point, on centre stage, and it was our job on stage to keep the balance on stage at all times.  But what I liked the most about this exercise was our lecturer volunteered many people to stand on the imaginary plate.  We soon discovered it didn’t matter how many people were on the plate, all the mattered was the balance stayed strong.  Everyone on the plate could move as long as their opposing cast member followed their movement and kept the balance.  The use of levels was insisted as well.  But what I liked particularly about this stage craft was its technique to tell a story.   

     For example, if two people were on the imaginary plate then it could give the impression of a confrontation between the characters.  Or if there were three characters on stage it could give the impression of friends in discussion.  But if there was over ten people on stage, maintaining the balance of the plate, that probably wouldn’t work as it could decrease the factor of telling a story and seem a group of people in a close huddle.  Yet with use of levels and people moving on the plate, then it would be another matter because then it could give various interpretations of what is occurring on stage and where it could go.

     I personally loved the use of this stage craft, especially when two cast members took place on the plate and kept a movement, with locked eye contact, and gave the strong sense of confrontations or arguments.  Therefore I wanted to use this stage craft in one of my scenes.

Rehearsals

     To begin our rehearsal session my and a few fellow cast members decided to work on Act One, Scene Fifteen.  Together we looked through various performing strategies as to how we could present this scene, giving a detailed depiction of the scene, and ensured that the audience could understand what was taking place during this scene.  Our first attempts failed and the possibility was getting trickier by the minute.  But it wasn’t until one of my fellow cast member suggested that we used the circular stage formation and in particular the plate technique.

     Here is a short extract video footage of our early staging, in rehearsals, for Act One, Scene Fifteen:

     I initial thoughts to begin with was that; we established that every character on stage had to maintain the balance of the stage whilst keeping their expression and characterisations visible for audience members.  Plus there is a strong sense of tension between the characters ‘John’ and ‘Mark’.  Therefore I inputted that should be constant movement between the characters all to back up the feeling of tension and confrontation.

     So when we presented what we had achieved to our lecturer, so we came to a blocking session in order to develop the stage craft to a perfect standard.  Through this blocking session, we managed to change the character movement on stage to have them move in between on another, as well as increase that sense of tension through circulation, and keep every character who is speaking visible to the audience. 

     What we ended up with, I thought, was pretty impressive.  As we managed to underline the areas for improvement, and I think with more rehearsal on that particular scene we will be able to make perfection for that scene alone.

 

My Character’s Objectives and Obstacles

     To end this week exploring our characters and staging strategies, we returned to our characters exploring what their true purpose is, not for just the entire play, but stand-alone scenes.  We were all asked questions concerning our characters, and it was our job to answer them exploring our character’s objectives and obstacles.

     For my character ‘John’ I decided to look at his overall objectives and obstacles.  What I received was:

·         What is ‘John’s’ objective? – ‘John’s’ objective is to bring spread his words of hope to the people in his society, and bring his ambitions of a brighter future to life, and end the misery.

·         What does he want? – ‘John’ key goal is to bring an end to all the pain and suffering of the people in the world, in these dark times.

·         What does he wish to achieve? – ‘John’ is in London to begin his anti-war protests and gain more friends and followers to make his ambitions come to life.

·         How can he achieve his goals? – By keeping his head high, and keeping his friends close and his eyes open to the real deal, then he can achieve his ambitions of a brighter future for him, his society and his friends.

·         But, what can stop him? – His constant fear and hiding from his dark and mysterious past.

·         What will stop him? – Anyone who strongly stands against him, such as the characters ‘Ruth’ and ‘Stephen’, and their desperation to bring an end to their large conflict.

·         How can he avoid these obstacles in order to achieve his objectives? – Once again by keeping his head high and keeping his perspectives strong and to the point then he may just succeed.

     This is what I gained from a summary of ‘John’s obstacles and objectives throughout the play.  But we were all handed a sheet of paper stating “Useful Transitive Verbs” to which we could use singular words to depict our character objectives in single scenes.  The first scene I looked at explored ‘John’s’ thoughts and feelings and objectives throughout Act Two, Scene Eight.

     Now in earlier rehearsal session I and my fellow cast members achieved a decent presentation of this scene for a practical performance.  As we blocked the scene using staging strategies and levels to bring it to life, but I wanted to use the singular verbs to depict ‘John’s’ objective in this particular scene so my performance would be more convincing in more rehearsals.

The “Useful Transitive Verbs for Act Two, Scene Eight

1.       Approach, Rachel and Amir the sense of an awkward atmosphere.

2.       Tease, Rachel for being tired, as both characters have a strong friendship.

3.       Charm, Rachel as he completed all of the jobs required in the house.

4.       and Shove, the fact that he would have been a better boyfriend for Rachel than Amir is currently.

     I found these points extremely helpful for that scene in particular, and I do see the need to use these verbs again to understand my characters objective in other scenes.

     In summary I feel this week was extremely helpful, as we began practically rehearsing and continuing to explore the characters in more detail for our future rehearsal session and our main performance.  Plus I especially look forward to exploring these elements of my character in further detail for my character’s profile.