CHARACTER INTERPRETATION
Age group recommended:  13 and up
Type of class suggested:  Intermediate theatre; Workshops

Objective:  To acquaint students with the idea that character interpretation goes deeper than the lines; and the use of symbolism is an easy way for creating tangibility in complex characters.

This lesson plan was used in a workshop; however I believe it can be useful
in any aspect of a beginning to intermediate course delving into the fundamentals of acting.

Allow forty-fifty minutes for the entire workshop to take place; with an
emphasis on the performance aspect, of course!

Movement 1: Symbol & Interpretation of it.

***Explain to your students that you will be placing a number of symbols and words on the chalkboard.  They have nothing to do with your particular beliefs or fancy; they are merely to stimulate the creative juices of the students' minds.

1st Symbol.  -  Draw a flag with a circle in it.  Ask the students what that symbol tells them, what they relate it to, what the relation makes them feel, etc.

Once they have answered fairly enough, add to the circle a swastika (*This is where the warning above comes in)  Expect your students to be stunned and squeamish.  Ask them: "What is it about this SYMBOL that frightens us?"; and so on.  Discuss how even though it is only a picture, its recognizable nasty connotation makes that image evil.

Once you and your students have suffered enough, GET RID OF THAT NASTY PICTURE!!!!

2nd Symbol.  -  Put the standard "sunshine" shape up on the board. .   Ask them what it makes them feel, etc.  Basically repeating the process above, only with a much nicer symbol as the sun.

Erase The Sunshine.

3rd Symbol -  Write the sentence: "Stark raving naked" on the board--ask them what it makes them feel, etc. . .

Erase that.

Discuss how through our lives as people, we recognize symbols in picture, in sound, in movement; we put a meaning to them (which can be good or bad) and we memorize it!  Whenever we see it from then on, our reaction tends to be the same.  -  The same concept of symbolism can be used in creating depth in characters.  To fill the space during and in between the lines.

Movement 2: Bus Stop

Give each member of your class a card with character to portray written on it.  Perhaps from a play you've been reading, or perhaps just a sketch as broad as "bitter" or "overjoyed" etc.  Set a bench or a chair in the acting space and tell them to use this theory of symbolism to help them move as
their character to the bus-bench waiting for it to arrive.

This can be done in Solo form--and then analyzed by fellow students. . .

Or it can be done in duo or triad form, having one person sit on the bench being joined by another, and then another--having an improvisation of the character assigned between them.

Instructor:  As an instructor offer commentary and feed-back as appropriate; if you wish you may have the students guess what character the performers are playing.  Make sure the students understand that the use of symbolism is nothing more than a tool to give a realistic depth to a part.  No matter how elegantly the lines are spoke, if the heart is not there--if it is not backed
by some sort of personalization it is as if the actors fell into the scene and merely decided to go with it.  -  That doesn't flow.

Designed by:

Jeff Puukka
 Artistic Director
 Discovery Theatre Lab
 Portland, OR
 jpuukka@aol.com
 Website:  http://hometown.aol.com/jpuukka/puukkaDTL.html
 

HISTORY vs CREATIVITY in acting

Designed for: Ages 16 through 18,
workshops/intermediate acting classes.  (I designed it for a workshop setting.)
It may be difficult to do with more than ten-fifteen students.

Objective: to communicate the importance of tangible characters.  Introducing a technique
of using a character's history, your own creativity as an actor, and the environment and circumstances of the play, in order to create a full character.  It is obvious that there are a
number of sides to theatre.  There is what the audience sees and hears the performer doing.
The actor's voice, facial involvement, use of breath, physical expression, etc.  This lesson plan focuses on how HISTORY/CREATIVITY/ENVIRONMENT may be used to help the actor
create that voice, face, breathing pattern, and physique.

MOVEMENT A:  Discussion--

Arrange the students in a circle, the instructor in the middle. . .  ask the following questions.

1.  What are some of the most appreciated powers of theatre?  (Ideal answers: theatre pulls us
out of our every day normality, theatre exhales life, theatre teaches, theatre entertains, theatre
adds to our own identity by showcasing the identity of others.)

2.  What makes this happen?  Before the lights go on, before the sets are built, before the
costumes are sewn.  If I were to strip all the materialistic and fabricated elements of a play
away. . .what would remain?  (ideal answer: a performer playing a part.)

3.  what happens when a performer is acting, that brings us as an audience to be spectators
to those awesome powers of theatre?  what makes the performance tangible to us?  what
makes it a living, moving thing for us?  (Ideal answers: voice, movement, pace, technique)

4.  (Tie in to lesson plan. . . .)  HOW as actors do we get there?  How as actors do we make
our voice sound just right, do we insert our body's and our hearts into the character to pull the people with the $20 tickets in the audience away from what happened to them before and in to
the world of the play?  . . .
We must surrender ourselves to the character.  We must forget about our own itching elbows
and twitching eyes, and submit ourselves into the psychology, personality, and spirit of the character.  There are a number of ways to do that.  Our momentary focus is on discovering
how to form an equal balance of a character's history and our own creativity to become it.

MOVEMENT B:  Observation Of Every Day Life.

Lead your class around your acting space.  Open the windows see what is happening outside.  Listen to the sounds the room makes.  Feel what the clothing you are wearing does to your body.  think about how recent political events help or hurt your life.  Think about what you ate for
breakfast that morning, how it went with lunch, and what it might be doing to make you feel the
way you feel at the current moment.  What is the temperature in the air doing to your skin?
What do the settings in the room and in the building do to your current mood?
-  Discover/discuss briefly how elements of every day life contribute to state of mind, and how
the same thing is true for the soul of a character you are portraying.

MOVEMENT C -  Participation with Literature

Two brief thirty second to one minute monologues.  One for male actors, one for female performers.  (For the time being as an example of how the lesson plan works...we'll use the characters Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth from Nathanial Hawthorne's "THE SCARLET
LETTER")

VOCAL PROCLAMATION. . .
1: Whisper "My Name is Hester Prynne" (for the girls) and "My name is Roger Chillingworth"
(for the guys).
2: Speak it.
3: shout it.

Take the piece of literature, and read it as a class. Look at what the words actually say in
regard to the character's history.  What happened in the last five weeks?  What is going to
happen soon?

(In regard to Hester. . .)  What is she feeling cooped up behind that door, that is about to open?  What will she do when she issues forth to be judged by Hawthorne's puritan "throng of bearded men" ?  -  What does the child mean to her?  Is it a burden or does she love it with all of her heart?  What are her fears?

(In regard to Chillingworth)  How old is he?  why does he really want revenge on Dimmesdale?
Is it because Dimmesdale's child was conceived in Hester and not a child of his own line?  Is it because Dimmesdale is a minister and he has done a violation of not only ethics but the cloth?

***Examine such questions (as the examples given) and search for answers in the literature.
If they are not given. . .  find something that historically fits and aligns well with the character.
Acting is about putting together pieces of a puzzle on a road to becoming the character you are playing.  Each bit helps. . .

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE SCENE?

Every scene/every monologue starts in the middle of something?  There is nothing more
off-putting to me, than going to a production of HAMLET with an intermission right in between the play-within-a-play scene and Polonius' murder!  Why?  Because fifteen minutes after the last half ended. . .all the action has worn off, people have been thrown back into their every day lives. . .
and all of a sudden you have Claudius' on stage solo/center stage, shouting at the top of his lungs about how guilty he feels because he killed his brother. . .  when mean-while, we have to
*think back* to remember what happened to cause him to do that.  My point is this:
Every scene starts in the middle of something. . .when the actual text begins awkwardly, use improvisation as a way to thrust yourself gently into the roll. . . begin the monologue when you feel comfortable in order to find the medium.  Otherwise it is like trying to rehearse the hardest
part of a heated duo scene without being cued by your co-part.

MOVEMENT D: Performing a monologue. . .

Assign a roll to be performed within the next day or so.  Ask the students to use the previously instructed method of creating an environment/history/state of mind in order to play the part just
a tad better.

A NOTE ON THIS PHILOSOPHY:  There is no way to grade the monologue, because there
is never a right or wrong way to act.  But you can (as an instructor) offer constructive advice
during an evaluation.
 
 

Designed by:

Jeff Puukka
 Artistic Director
 Discovery Theatre Lab
 Portland, OR
 jpuukka@aol.com
 Website:  http://hometown.aol.com/jpuukka/puukkaDTL.html