Every character has had some sort of education. Some characters are ‘street wise”, and their education came from the school of hard knocks. Others are Harvard grads. In other words, characters are people. To play a character, you’re going to need to figure out what their educational background is, and put this into your character history.
An education largely dictates the type of language one uses, and this is one of the most important tools the actor can use to determine the character’s educational history. You can “back-engineer” your understanding of the character’s education by a hard look at the TYPE of words he or she uses. Are they big, literate words? Are they “specialized” words, nomenclature that fits the character into a certain profession or set of beliefs? Are they ‘street-wise” words, portraying your character as a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks? Is there a lot of slang in their dialogue? Is the slang current?
By the way, it is both the words and the way the character strings them together – the sentence structure, which inform.
Determining the educational background of the character will also help you decide what sort of objectives, tactics and beats the character might have. These are always limited to some extent by education. It’s the “Opportunity Cost” principle in economics. If you invest your time or money in one area, you no longer have the time or money to invest in another area. Generally, a person with one kind of education has not had time to get another kind of education, and so is limited by both the education he DID receive and the education he DID NOT receive. A guy educated on the street knows how to get along on the street. He may make a terrific salesman or athlete or pimp. He would not make a good physician or physicist – he doesn’t have the education. This is not to say he couldn’t go out and GET that education, but we are interested in the character’s current state of existence.
______________
EXERCISE: Select a scene from a play that has a character you could do. Look carefully at the sort of words used. Do they suggest an educational background for the character. You’re looking at words and sentence structure for that scene. Take notes on what you learn about the character. Look at your notes and make some decisions regarding the character’s education.
______________
No comments:
Post a Comment