In today's lesson, we began by looking into our characters and sharing them with other members of the class. We were to share three interesting facts about our characters - I said Danny is generally just a bit lost and he can't really focus on too much for too long (i.e. his attention span is very poor, but in a comical way), and although he is constantly worried about dental college and getting references, I don't believe it is an arrogance or a self-centred thing about him, I think it is just him being stupid and not thinking of the bigger picture or the repercussions of what has happened. This is something that I missed earlier on in the unit was how important characterisation was going to be for Danny - Danny's anxiousness; this is an essential part of his character and since learning this about him, I have looked back at all of the scenes we've done and thought about how I could adjust my performance to apply this anxious trait. For example, in the first scene with Lou, John Tate and myself, I am now going to be pacing back and forth muttering to myself about dental college and trying work out ways around the situation that wouldn't put Danny's future in jeopardy. To the audience, I think this will come across as confusing to them at first purely by virtue of me just being in the background of Lou and John Tate for a whole page of dialogue. Then when I come in with "I can't get mixed up in all this, I'm gonna be a dentist." I have sort of given up trying to find a way around it and almost putting the responsibility on Lou and John Tate to get me out of the situation, or at least help me to get out; but from this it is easy to perceive Danny as arrogant, selfish and/or very dependant on others, but I don't think he is - I think he is just a bit stupid and he doesn't realise that everyone else is in the same boat as him, and that he really overthinks bad situations. To show this side of Danny I will still continue to show his 'lost' nature, being easily distract and amused by his surroundings and just generally show that he is a bit of a simpleton. For example, when John Tate announce the word 'dead' is "banned", I stop pacing immediately and stand in almost like a trance of confusion, and then when I finally speak and say 'Banned?' I think he is genuinely confused at how you can literally ban a word, and he genuinely isn't aware that you can't actually ban a word. Essentially, when showing these two traits I need to really focus on and consider my physicality and movement. Especially due to the fact that my character doesn't speak much, so the emotions I wish to give off will be heavily relied on my physicality.
I also said that he is one of the few characters who don't turn out crazy or mental - granted he does go on about dental college non stop throughout the play, and then end up hating it at work experience, but he doesn't go mental or crazy or any other form of what may be considered as 'insane' like Cathy or Brian does. I was in a group with Will (Mark) and Henri (Richard); when discussing Mark, Will said he could be speculated as being Jan's brother or girlfriend and I believe this to be dependant on how you play the character and how you interact with Jan and portray the relationship - from observing their performance over the rehearsal period so far, I see them more as brother and sister; they seem quite argumentative and petty, but you can easily tell they care for each other very much - much like a brother and sister relationship. He also that he feels like some sort of a narrator when playing Mark - which I definitely agree with, Mark and Jan open every scene with a duologue which I think kind sets the scene for the audience and soot explains to the audience what sort of topic they can expect in the scene, very much like a narrator, how he nor Jan ever address the audience. When discussing Richard, Henri said that towards the end he feels like a narrator because his monologue kind of ties everything together - he explains what happens to each character and brings everything to a close. We then were set the task of imagining we, as our characters, had been arrested for the crime of killing Adam and we were to act out what we would be thinking/saying to ourselves in the prison - kind of like an inner monologue. I talked about how it wasn't supposed to happen and that it was wrong. But then a sudden panic comes across me because I suddenly remember that being in prison will decrease my chance of dental college. This helped me to have an even better understanding of my character because I was able to think of what my character would do and say in an unknown situation. We then began a run through of the play, implementing our further character developments into our performance. For me, it suddenly made it a lot more interesting and enjoyable because I knew what I should be doing in terms of my thoughts and actions within the scene. I was able to interpret the scene and the dialogue in such a way that Danny would, thus improved my 'inner monologue' and my reactions.
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