 Subject: FINDING YOUR CHARACTER'S SOUL Date: Wed, 07 Jan 1998 08:29:18 +0000 From: Jeremy Whelan Professional and Amateur Live and Media Acting Organization: KAPS, Inc. - CyberENET Network Newsgroups: alt.acting References: 1 This was a request from an actor on another mailing list but though some of you would find it useful. >Could you please post any exercises you use to help find the >character's >past, and intentions Jeremy Whelan Wrote: Try this technique I created to help my students with this problem. Character Game I: Scrapbook >From your list of given circumstances, start to build a scrapbook of everything given, and then work your imagination. This too ties in with the Learning Styles model that I speak of frequently. Cover all three primary learning modalities. VISUAL: Suppose a given circumstance is that your character comes from a large family in the Midwest. None of the family members are in the script, but they are still your family, and you are still from a small Midwestern town. So, using old books, magazines and photos, find a picture of each person in your family: Mom, Dad, your fifteen year old brother, your twelve year old brother and your ten year old sister. Find a picture of your school, your town, your hangout, your best friend, your dog, your house, your room, and anything else that's significant. Write notations next to each picture, i.e. me and Bobby at Lake Bilpo summer 89. I will sometimes get way into writing about the experience I was having when the picture was taken, including the thoughts and emotions of that moment. Put this idea into full use. Get pictures of all those memories. Never use a picture of anyone you know in your scrape book. NO old family photos, NO celebrities that you recognize, only places and things totally unknown to you the actor, but known to your character. If you are talking about Mary, your high school girlfriend, have some pictures of Mary. Don't let anything be fuzzy about her, and don't use a picture of your real high school girlfriend. You're from Philly, and a Philly school girl is very different from a Rocky Comfort, Missouri, school girl. You'd be using incompatible images and emotions, and they can't ring as true. Ideally, you could get a yearbook from a small town high school and pick out a girlfriend. Just studying her picture would probably make my point. Cover every import stage of your characters growth, childhood, adolescent, teen, 20's however far it goes. Baptisms, Bar Mitvas, Summer Camp, Birthdays, Proms, Weddings, Divorces etc. etc. etc. Remember, annotate each picture and don't be afraid to let the writing run if it's coming out. Use your imagination! AUDIO: Obviously the tunes of the day that surround that characters memories. What was the top ten that month, day, year. Chimes on the porch when the wind came off the lake. The door slamming as she left. A taped phone message that you kept where he told you something important about your relationship. An ambulance siren as it pulled up to the scene of the accident. A faucet that leaks just like the one in the apartment you shared in Paris. Use your imagination! TACTILE/KINESTHETIC: Make your scrapbook concrete, physical. Add dolls, match books, baseball gloves, a key from your first car, a pressed flower from a prom. The engagement ring you kept. The urn containing your first wives ashes. The gun you used to kill her. The unopened pack of cigarettes from London, his sun glasses, her sweater. Use baby shoes, and post cards from anywhere, write what you want on them. Anything tactile, something you can pick up and handle in some way. Use your imagination! So much of today's acting is lazy and superficial. Work on your part, do everything you can. This technique has been very helpful to any actor that has used it. Try it once, you'll be hooked. The best part of technique is that it is enormous fun to do. I might point out that this replaces the old school *biography* that actors always had to write. The scrape book technique takes advantage of over sixty years of research into how people learn. Research that had hardly if not even begun when Stanislavski died in 1938 at the age of 75. BTW Happy 100th birthday to The Moscow Art Theatre and Brecht. Ciao, Jeremy http://www.Jeremy-Whelan-Acting.com Spanish Link: http://www.Jeremy-Whelan-Acting.com/sp.html
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