ACTING LIKE A CHILD
Hey Guys, so today I'm going to be discussing the difficulties with adults playing the roles of a children.
As part of university degree at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCCSD) I am on placement this term at an amazing theatre company for young people called Group 64, which is part of Putney Arts Theatre. I am so excited to be able to work on some amazing projects with them and after only being there for a few days I have already fell in love with their company and the work they do. At the moment I will be working with assistant youth director of Group 64 Kate as well as two other students on a piece a children's theatre, which we are hoping to eventually tour around schools and festivals. The main character is a six year old girl that loves to ask lots of questions. So far everyone has come up with some great ideas and I have to admit I think its going to be pretty amazing show when its finished.
One of our biggest challenges with children's theatre is being able to create something that children can relate and connect to without coming across patronising or 'Very CBeebies' (Latter: 2013) as my previous director would put it. For people who have no idea what we mean by this I'll quickly explain. CBeebies is a popular children's channel and although they do broadcast some fun and educating TV shows for kids, they do often come across a little condescending and 'full on'. After watching it one morning with my three year old cousin, she turns to me and says 'Why does she look like that' pointing to the presenter, reading out birthday cards. The presenter was prancing around the screen wearing big red trousers and some crazy makeup. It just made no sense, why couldn't she just read out the cards normally without all these other things going on. It was utterly pointless and In my opinion and clearly my cousins from the look on her face, that it was not entertaining, it was just a waste of perfectly good TV time.
It sort of reminds of the way some people like to use high pitched baby talk to communicate with their pets. It's embarrassing and completely uncalled for. Anyways part of our theatre piece would require adults playing the role of children. Now the biggest question for us is, how do we portray this successfully? I've seen many actors try and tackle this and it ends up being either extremely successful or a complete disaster.
I previously worked Front of House at The Phoenix Theatre where Willy Russell's show 'Blood Brother's' was on. I was used to watching adult actors playing the roles of young children and after being there for over a year I was able to see these characters come to life by various different actors. After watching these actors six days a week I couldn't help but became quite critical of them and how they were portraying these roles. I found it very intriguing to see how every actor had a completely different interpretation. What I've learnt from watching Blood Brothers is that an audience member has to believe in the character you are playing. This can be hard when an adults physical appearance is different from a child's but a good actor will help the audience see past this.
For example I was always fascinated by the way the actor playing the character of Mickey, who looked about mid 40's still managed to create complete truth around his character. It was always such a pleasure to watch him on stage and even though he looked much older I still believed from his characteristics and mannerisms that he was a child, unfortunately I cannot express the same feelings for some of the other characters.
As we were trying to explore the role of a child for our theatre piece I wanted to take everything I had learnt from Blood Brother's about what makes this role successful and what doesn't in order to create a character that the audience will be able to identify with. As a group we brain stormed different ideas that we would need to think about. How does a child of six act?, How do they speak?, What sort of characteristics do they have?, How may they use their physicality?
These are all essential questions that an actor needs to ask themselves. it not good enough to stomp about, using baby talk because this would be a complete over exaggeration from the truth. This is something that needs be researched and dissected. This type of role is something that even the best actors can get wrong.
This idea of playing a child is not new to me as last year I performed in a piece of children's theatre called 'The Amazing adventures of Puck the Piskie'. with RCCSD. This piece was a modern twist to William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream. The play was about five young Piskies (Fairies), which all had completely different personalities from one another. Throughout the play they went on a massive adventure so destroy the evil queen and save the day. I was ecstatic to play the role of a young version of Shakespeare's character 'Titania', who went on all her adventures with the naughty Piskie called Puck. I found this a hard character to play but as the performances progressed I could feel myself growing into the role and I started to really enjoy it. The thing that I valued the most from this experience was the feedback for the audience. They say that children are the harshest critics and I believe this is completely true. If they are not enjoying the performance or if they are bored, they will almost always make this apparent to you by either making noise or even just by getting up and walking off. Although it can be a bit disheartening to see your audience get up and walk away or start putting up your set out of boredom, it does however allow you as an actor to see what is working and what is not. This way your forced to change and develop the parts have gone wrong.
This was what we wanted to aim for with our performance, to reach the audience in a way where they are totally engrossed in the characters and the performance. So.. for our first rehearsal we decided to try out some different exercises to try and challenge our inner child. I started by playing some short games like 'tag' and 'yes lets', where someone will give everyone something to act out and very does the act whilst saying yes lets. We tried doing this in different ages starting with an adult, then a teenager and then as a six year old child. Developing on from this exercise we decided to in our own little world to wake up and do whatever we feel we would do if we were a child, this worked really well and I was soon feeling as if i was a little kid messing around in the morning before school. From this idea we slowly developed on out walk and small characteristics. For example without even realising I kept chewing on my scarf throughout all the exercises. This was something had had come so naturally that at first I wasn't even aware of it. I also noticed that when I was playing a child my body felt extremely loose. Normally my body feels very tense, however in character I felt the complete opposite. These may only be small things, but can make a huge difference to your character.
Amazing Adventures of Puck the Piskie
'Students play leaves children spellbound' (West Briton: 2013)
Cornish Newspaper Article
Early Rehearsal from: Amazing Adventures of Puck the Piskie (RCCSD)
Don't forget to check out my website: www.chantallopezdias.com
and my fundraiser: www.gofundme.com/studyinla
As part of university degree at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCCSD) I am on placement this term at an amazing theatre company for young people called Group 64, which is part of Putney Arts Theatre. I am so excited to be able to work on some amazing projects with them and after only being there for a few days I have already fell in love with their company and the work they do. At the moment I will be working with assistant youth director of Group 64 Kate as well as two other students on a piece a children's theatre, which we are hoping to eventually tour around schools and festivals. The main character is a six year old girl that loves to ask lots of questions. So far everyone has come up with some great ideas and I have to admit I think its going to be pretty amazing show when its finished.
One of our biggest challenges with children's theatre is being able to create something that children can relate and connect to without coming across patronising or 'Very CBeebies' (Latter: 2013) as my previous director would put it. For people who have no idea what we mean by this I'll quickly explain. CBeebies is a popular children's channel and although they do broadcast some fun and educating TV shows for kids, they do often come across a little condescending and 'full on'. After watching it one morning with my three year old cousin, she turns to me and says 'Why does she look like that' pointing to the presenter, reading out birthday cards. The presenter was prancing around the screen wearing big red trousers and some crazy makeup. It just made no sense, why couldn't she just read out the cards normally without all these other things going on. It was utterly pointless and In my opinion and clearly my cousins from the look on her face, that it was not entertaining, it was just a waste of perfectly good TV time.
It sort of reminds of the way some people like to use high pitched baby talk to communicate with their pets. It's embarrassing and completely uncalled for. Anyways part of our theatre piece would require adults playing the role of children. Now the biggest question for us is, how do we portray this successfully? I've seen many actors try and tackle this and it ends up being either extremely successful or a complete disaster.
I previously worked Front of House at The Phoenix Theatre where Willy Russell's show 'Blood Brother's' was on. I was used to watching adult actors playing the roles of young children and after being there for over a year I was able to see these characters come to life by various different actors. After watching these actors six days a week I couldn't help but became quite critical of them and how they were portraying these roles. I found it very intriguing to see how every actor had a completely different interpretation. What I've learnt from watching Blood Brothers is that an audience member has to believe in the character you are playing. This can be hard when an adults physical appearance is different from a child's but a good actor will help the audience see past this.
For example I was always fascinated by the way the actor playing the character of Mickey, who looked about mid 40's still managed to create complete truth around his character. It was always such a pleasure to watch him on stage and even though he looked much older I still believed from his characteristics and mannerisms that he was a child, unfortunately I cannot express the same feelings for some of the other characters.
As we were trying to explore the role of a child for our theatre piece I wanted to take everything I had learnt from Blood Brother's about what makes this role successful and what doesn't in order to create a character that the audience will be able to identify with. As a group we brain stormed different ideas that we would need to think about. How does a child of six act?, How do they speak?, What sort of characteristics do they have?, How may they use their physicality?
These are all essential questions that an actor needs to ask themselves. it not good enough to stomp about, using baby talk because this would be a complete over exaggeration from the truth. This is something that needs be researched and dissected. This type of role is something that even the best actors can get wrong.
This idea of playing a child is not new to me as last year I performed in a piece of children's theatre called 'The Amazing adventures of Puck the Piskie'. with RCCSD. This piece was a modern twist to William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream. The play was about five young Piskies (Fairies), which all had completely different personalities from one another. Throughout the play they went on a massive adventure so destroy the evil queen and save the day. I was ecstatic to play the role of a young version of Shakespeare's character 'Titania', who went on all her adventures with the naughty Piskie called Puck. I found this a hard character to play but as the performances progressed I could feel myself growing into the role and I started to really enjoy it. The thing that I valued the most from this experience was the feedback for the audience. They say that children are the harshest critics and I believe this is completely true. If they are not enjoying the performance or if they are bored, they will almost always make this apparent to you by either making noise or even just by getting up and walking off. Although it can be a bit disheartening to see your audience get up and walk away or start putting up your set out of boredom, it does however allow you as an actor to see what is working and what is not. This way your forced to change and develop the parts have gone wrong.
This was what we wanted to aim for with our performance, to reach the audience in a way where they are totally engrossed in the characters and the performance. So.. for our first rehearsal we decided to try out some different exercises to try and challenge our inner child. I started by playing some short games like 'tag' and 'yes lets', where someone will give everyone something to act out and very does the act whilst saying yes lets. We tried doing this in different ages starting with an adult, then a teenager and then as a six year old child. Developing on from this exercise we decided to in our own little world to wake up and do whatever we feel we would do if we were a child, this worked really well and I was soon feeling as if i was a little kid messing around in the morning before school. From this idea we slowly developed on out walk and small characteristics. For example without even realising I kept chewing on my scarf throughout all the exercises. This was something had had come so naturally that at first I wasn't even aware of it. I also noticed that when I was playing a child my body felt extremely loose. Normally my body feels very tense, however in character I felt the complete opposite. These may only be small things, but can make a huge difference to your character.
Amazing Adventures of Puck the Piskie
'Students play leaves children spellbound' (West Briton: 2013)
Cornish Newspaper Article
Early Rehearsal from: Amazing Adventures of Puck the Piskie (RCCSD)
Don't forget to check out my website: www.chantallopezdias.com
and my fundraiser: www.gofundme.com/studyinla
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