1. Creating a more interesting character (continued)
2. Pacing (continued)
3. Character shifts
Creating a more interesting character (continued)
Today we continued to work on creating a mini backstory to make our character more interesting - and to give us more acting choices to work with.
I had Ella pick a few things that would add emotions, actions, voice inflections, deliberate character shifts based on predetermined motivations, and make for an overall better vehicle for the story the monologue was trying to tell.
We took some cues from the monologue itself - using context clues in the actual lines, and brief character description they gave us at the top: "student body president, 17 years old", and lines from the monologue: "book-wormish".
We then built upon those vague descriptors and decided that this girl -
1. Was in charge of everything, really determined, used to being an authority, self important
2. Prom is everything to her - the only reason she even ran for student body president is to be able to plan the prom theme.
3. She had never kissed/dated a boy - she felt like prom was her last chance
4. She would stop at nothing to get her prom
We then took cues from the first lines of the monologue to know where to start emotionally and what to do with our acting choices right off the bat.
Because the first line is "That's not true. Young girls need the prom" - we decided that she was coming in mid-argument of someone who was determined to cancel the prom, who thought it was stupid, and was going to ruin all her hard work.
Because we started the monologue from a place we knew was a reaction from someone else - we did an exercise where i would say the lines we felt were the most likely to be in the script before our opening line (with the elaborate character breakdown and additions we made to the story)
Doing all of the character backstory homework will help Ella create a better, more interesting character and scene every time she is acting. The more we use our formula of creating a character backstory - the faster we can do it.
Pacing (continued)
Pacing of a scene is so important, because it allows the actor to be in control of comedic or dramatic timing, emphasis on words, and actions and reactions. We talked about appropriate pacing today, and learning to be comfortable with silence as it helps move the scene forward or emphasize and emotion you are trying to play. We're still working on the pacing of our beats (it's one of the hardest things for an actor to master), but Ella is doing awesome!!
Character shifts
Today we also worked on showing several sides of our acting ability in the same scene or monologue, and looking for potential character shifts in a scene based on context clues from actual lines, or places we could create them ourselves.
A character shift is when we decide to play a different emotion. It could be a completely different emotion, giving our character a "180 shift", or it could be us choosing to play the same emotion to a different degree.
With each character shift, we map out what our one line would be to describe it, making sure that each section of our monologue (or scene) has a very distinct purpose to help direct us with our actions and voice inflections.
Our 3 sections were -
1. "You're trying to ruin my life"
2. "I'm going to prove you wrong"
3. "You are crushing my whole soul - i need this"
With the first one, we took an angry, defensive tone - accompanied by it's distinct action - in your face, forward motions.
With the second, we decided to sound more academic - like she was trying to use more "debate skills" while still riled up - accompanied by it's distinct action - side to side movement, "addressing a jury", pacing.
With the third, we decided to have a slightly defeated melt down, accompanied by it's distinct action - a lot of downward arm motion, slumped shoulders, looking slightly up to show she was also addressing herself.