Blog #3: Characterisation... Favourite Worst Nightmare?

Description: 

The first week of April is gone and the main topic for me was... characterisation. Throughout this week we continued with our character exploration during the school play's rehearsals, which involved defining a face expression, a centre of energy, a way of walking (pace, speed, etc.), mannerisms and a voice for our character. As we have already learnt by studying German Expressionism, actors manage to build characters based on their inner feelings, emotions and experiences rather than by trying to imitate someone or trying to fully base their characterisation on an stimulus. Therefore this process demanded concentration and self exploration,  in order to stick to German Expressionism's conventions. We were also expected to create a set of movements with gestures, sounds (which then turned into phrases) and intentions.

Analysis: 

We started with a breathing exercise which helped us to identify our centre of energy and to be able to move this energy from the centre to different parts of our body. In my case, I found my centre of energy to be located around my waist and belly button. I had in mind the idea of being sort of like a flamingo as they seem to have their centre of energy around their loin. They also  give the idea of fineness and languor which seem quite elegant and imposing. I then  managed to move the energy from my waist to my arms, shoulders and chest. This changed totally the attitude of my character which seemed to be more like a gorilla as the shoulder were raised and my hands were closed in a tight fist. I personally feel comfortable when using my face to express feelings, ideas or emotions therefore I consider that creating a face expression for a character is something I can do easily. I had in mind the idea of a character who is confused and overwhelmed by sudden changes in his life. I visualized Miss Alicia's as a sort of cave with different textures and smells. My eyes were really opened as it is a convention of German Expressionism and my mouth was opened to show the amazement of the character which is somehow exploring his environment and surrounding just with the stare. Finding a voice for this character was not an easy task as I didn't wanted it to be so stereotypical nor simplistic; it had to be a voice which was inhuman and unreal as that is a convention of German Expressionism however I did not manage to find the perfect pitch, volume or accent for this character. A characteristic of German Expressionism is also the use of archetypes, like in "The Son" or "Masses and Man", characters do not have definite names but they are rather called "the father" or "the woman" respectively. This intended to allow the audience to easily identify with the situations and problems the characters were going through. The audience could identify with different themes like "breaking with the past in order to look towards the future" in the case of "The Son". Therefore, I wanted to build a character that will allow the audience to feel identified. I felt that this character wanted to look rigid, strong and fearful on the outside but at the same time was emotionally breakable on the inside.  Once I defined the physicality of this character (raised chest, wide shoulders, hands in a fist, eyes wide open, mouth opened and horizontally extended-similar to the joker's) I was ready to work on a sequence of movements which would represent this character's personality. Roberto told us to do this work in pairs, and I worked with Nathalie. Rather than each one of us creating an individual sequence, we decided to make one together (which also helped us to identify how our characters responded with others) and ended up with a sequence in which my character felt threatened by Nathalie's character. 

At first, we received positive feedback from both Nicole and Roberto which made me feel confident and motivated me to keep exploring this character. I wanted to master the face expression, to show a clear difference in responses; a difference between when he was exploring the surroundings and when he was feeling threatened and menaced. Miss Alicia gave me the idea of using my breathing to show the intentions and feelings of my character; a more agitated breathing meant more tension, nervousness and fear; whilst a slower breathing shower a more relaxed attitude. However, when presenting Roberto told me that he thought that the character was not working. At first, I felt frustrated as that meant I had to start over and build a totally different character which did not look "tonto". Roberto told me that he wanted me to represent a more serious character which transmitted power, prepotency and contempt. He helped me to build a face expression similar to Lurch's, from "The Addams Family" which in my opinion would generated fear and suspense.

I had the eyes wide open, and an elongated face with a small lips and mouth... it looked creepy and unreal. However, it was really difficult for me to create a sequence and give this new character a voice as I'm not used to representing mean and prepotent characters. I also started thinking about German Expressionism's conventions and found a quote by Hermann Bahr which summarizes the idea

"Man screams from the depths of his soul; the whole era becomes a single piercing shriek. Art also screams, into deep darkness, screams for help, screams for the spirit. This is Expressionism"

As Hermann Bahr said, the purpose of Expressionism is to transmit the true emotions and feelings from the soul and it is not based on representing someone else. So... Am I doing right by building a character without using my personal experiences and feelings? Am I going against German Expressionism's conventions? Wouldn't it be better for me to build this "jefe"-like character from my point of view without being constrained by a face expression?

Connections:

Can I connect my character to myself? Well, honestly not quite as the character I'm building is serious, prepotent and somehow bitter. Although sometimes I might be a little explosive and grumpy I didn't feel that the character had all of my characteristics of emotions being explored. What do I mean by this? Well, if German Expressionism is based on capturing all of my feelings, this character should also show my other side...the more vulnerable side. I personally believe that it would be more interesting to play a character which is serious and powerful but at the same time who has a weaker and more vulnerable side. It would be interesting to play a character who is bad to other people in this case the employees as a way of retaliating what has been done to him previously. Maybe, he was punished as a child for unfair reasons and this has cause him to grow as a frustrated and aggressive individual.

If I compare this rehearsal to previous school play rehearsals I find similar characteristics. For example, with "Miyuki y los tres demonios" actors had to be properly trained to cope with the expectations and demands of this type of theatre. In this case, we had to explore our inner feelings to build a character that somehow represented us or which at least has some of our characteristics. Kabuki theatre also shares some characteristics with German Expressionism. Both theatre practices use exaggerated body characterisation and physicality; however in Kabuki theatre there isn't so much self exploration as there is in German Expressionism. If we want to connect the rehearsals to a performance which shows clearly the idea of self exploration, we could link these to "Confesiones" by Ana Correa as the actress herself tells the audience how she takes personal experiences and emotions in order to build characters for the Yuyachkani performances. As Max Beckmann said,

"Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement: for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make" 

This means that art itself helps the artist explore and know himself or herself better, in the end we know thanks to Ana Correa that to grow as an actor is to grow as a person. Which means that every experience in our life will influence the complexity and mastery of the characters that we are going to build.

Reflections:

Rehearsals so far have helped to understand what Ana Correa meant when referring to theatre and acting. I understood that the character and us are basically the same as both of us share characteristics and emotions. I also realized that it is sometimes difficult to come out of our comfort zones, as I previously mentioned it was really difficult for me to start building a character which is different to the characters I'm used to representing. It was hard for me to start building a character which at first does not seem to have many similarities with me, but I believe that I can make the character have similar characteristics to myself. Rather than limiting my character to being a character serious, emotionless... I would like to explore the other side of him and take some personal experiences, so I can understand what made this character be how he is. Empathizing is the key in my opinion. 

I was also able to understand that building an expressionist character is a totally different experience than building a character from a different theatre practice...for example theatre for children. Although both theatre practices use the body and face expression to represent clearly the character; they have different approaches to this matter. Firstly, theatre for children aims to relate to children and does not need much self-exploration, whilst German Expressionism is based on self exploration and the identification of feelings and emotions. However they both have similarities too, they both connect with the audience. Theatre for children directly connects with the audience as actors aim to directly address and talk to the spectators, in this case children. On the contrary, German Expressionism relates to the audience by the use of archetypes and generalizations...by using characters that the audience can easily identify with, actors easily transmit the emotions they want to portray. For example, by using characters like "The Woman" from "Masses and Man", the idea of freedom, justice and liberation are transmitted to the audience.

I would therefore, like to close this third entry with the following questions

Can a character built without much analysis of the inner feelings still be effective within the characteristics and demands of German Expressionism? Are we meant to make the audience understand our emotions? Will it be effective for the play if my character is able to show the two sides to his personality? Will the audience be able to empathize with him and understand why he acts like that? Will anyone feel identified with my character?

PD: Just in case you were wondering http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kpyo5_ENQQ