As it probably comes as no surprise to any of you, I thoroughly love Shakespeare and working on his plays. I find the depth & complexity of his characters something brilliant to work with as an actor, as well as the richness of the dialogue that has been given to each of them. All of the workshops have been a brilliant chance to put in some real work into not only Shakespearean character work, but also as a way of developing all characters from any script.
The notes that I found particularly useful were the ideas of 'actioning', which helped to put a definite feel to any section of script that felt unclear allowing to come alive with an emotional force. The main idea I enjoyed, which is mostly down to my character choice of one I know very well anyway, was the depth of thought I could put into the character; although Richard is always the villain, I was able to play him as someone more complex and devious, a true Machiavellian character with a genuine sense of depth rather than the archetype of the deformed evil mastermind.
Do you think you have to 'like' a character to play him well? i dont mean just find him interesting or complex but to actually see some goodness in him/ her?
ReplyDeleteAlso, here's a challenge if you have the time. Remembering your sound recorded presentation on unit 3 that we all enjoyed. If you recorded the speech as if for radio, would you do it the same?
I don't think that you have to 'like' a character in order to play them well, no. After all, not every character has very much goodness within them - Richard is a good example of that; I think it would be quite a challenge to find any genuine good qualities within him that aren't lighter shades of his darker aspects.
DeleteI shall accept that challenge, and with that I think I've found my other Unit 5 assessment piece...
I was once told that every character has to have a certain quality, including the baddies to gain interest or empathy from the audience otherwise they won't invest in the character or the story. Once I had been told this I noticed the effect myself.
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