Category Archives: Character Development

Character Evaluation- Chorus & Titorelli

Working as a member of the chorus throughout the past four months has taught me many things. Having never worked in a chorus before, I was happy to take the chance at experiencing it with STAMP Theatre but I did not imagine the extent of how much a chorus could be involved in a production before! In my opinion the chorus was the most important element in The Trail because not only did they have to carry out all the transitions between the scenes themselves, but we also had to stay incredibly focused and in tune with one another. If one person in the chorus should start to fall in posture, gesture or sound, the other members of the chorus would have to become aware of this and in order to combat it, make sure that they increase their own movement and volume in order to bring the other member back up to the required level. In this, we felt that we had an invisible network connecting us together as we were so aware of each other, that if necessary, if one member of the chorus forgot a line or movement, any one of us could step in. That is what I found so interesting about the chorus; the ability to link actor to actor without the realisation of it throughout rehearsal was a wonderful thing and something that I am extremely privileged to be a part of.

My characterisation of Titorelli had undergone much work throughout the rehearsal process, the most noticeable of which was the accent I chose to use for him. Starting rehearsal with an Italian accent was fine and everyone believed that it suited the character well, however as each session went on and the actors were becoming more grotesque in the way they played a character, I felt it was necessary to develop his voice as well as his physicality. Upon trying separately, French, German and a Cockney accent with the character I still believed that there was more that was required with Titorelli’s voice. I then began to think about Titorelli not as a grotesque character. He wasn’t naturalistic so therefore, why should he have a naturalistic accent? This is when it clicked and my thought was to combine a mixture of European accents to create a strange accent that the character believes to be real, but Joseph K does not. As every character K meets during the play tries to get something from him and deceives him in one form or another, I thought the same should be applied to Titorelli. Therefore, I wanted to play him as an imposter of a court painter; A painting of a mask within a masquerade ball. As K’s character starts to deteriorate toward the end of the play and he becomes a broken man, I feel that so should the characters and the world of the play around him reflect that. This is why I chose to play Titorelli in such a way. I played him as a character playing Joseph K’s image of what a court painter should be within the corrupt world that is crumbling around him.

Thanks, Joe.

Character Development: The Laundress and The Chorus

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“Definition of good acting: acting that is believable while telling the best possible story that serves the script” (Miller, 2010, p. 1).

Using the Theatre of the Grotesque and Commedia Dell’arte as major influences for our characterisations, a clear portrayal of storyline can easily be lost underneath the absurdity and exaggeration of these genres. To overcome this, a clear set of character objectives must be employed to give reason to the abnormal physicalisation and vocalisation of these non-naturalistic characters.

The Chorus

The chorus, displaying non-naturalistic tendency, are difficult to create realistic objectives for. As Thomas comments these “stage characters are essentially “action-figures”, that is, artificial objects designed to carry out certain actions, not real human beings. In realistic and classic plays characters perform actions based on plausible human behaviour, but in non-realistic plays they perform actions based primarily on an idea” (2009, p. 191). These actions are in aid of creating the world in which Joseph K resides, for instance, the creation of a telephone and a bed by means of prop, physicality and voice. These actions must be clear in the mind of all members of the chorus to avoid confusion in the absurdity of our chosen genres. However as Thomas also comments; “plausible human behaviour is not neglected or ignored, of course; otherwise the play would be arbitrary and incomprehensible” (2009, p. 191). Huld’s assistants, for example, hold the grotesque facial expressions and exaggerated physicality, but keep human characteristics. As this character, my objective was to follow and record Huld’s movements whilst simultaneously creating a visual spectacle through an invisible network of choreography. The purpose of the chorus is to primarily create the people and objects in the world surrounding Joseph K. Underlying this is the aim to produce a clever and innovative manifestation of theatre reflecting STAMP Theatre’s mission statement. These chorus characters may not be fully developed, however bring together elements of the Theatre of the Grotesque and Commedia dell’arte to provide entertainment;

“Characters in non-realistic plays are each unique in the way they embody the main idea. They may explain themselves or not, and even if they attempt to do so the conclusion may be elusive and ambiguous. Moreover, the characters are not “fully developed” as in realistic and classic plays. Character and idea are a single entity, a mutual embodiment of the play’s special world” (Thomas, 2009, p. 193).

The Laundress

When undertaking the process from the written word to the stage, Chubbuck asserts that it can be useful to create an inner monologue; “an “actual dialogue” (2004, p. 172) creating “a linear and comprehensive inner story” (2004, p.172). With Berkoff’s work, however, especially with the character of the Laundress, the inner dialogue is presented with the written word itself. With the non-naturalistic characters, unlike naturalistic human tendencies, the Laundress purposefully asserts her objectives and states her intentions. This provides a very simple process in discovering the character’s wants and needs. Within ‘The Trial’, characters other than Joseph K, are not supplied with detailed given circumstances, due to their non-naturalistic and absurd personalities. However, our characters must still have objectives to follow. I created a super-objective for The Laundress, providing reason for her actions on the stage; “this is an overarching ‘want’ which drives the character’s overall behaviour at this point in his [/her] life” (Elsam, 2006, p. 149).

The super-objective for my scene was as follows;

“I want to use Joseph K to free me from my current circumstances within the Law Courts by any means possible.”

This allowed me to produce a performance that primarily focused on storytelling for the Laundress’ scene, aiding in the chaos and absurdity that Joseph K finds himself enveloped in.

In addition, my vocalisation and physicalisation needed to reflect the chosen genres of our theatre company; Theatre of the Absurd, Grotesque and Commedia dell’arte to a certain extent. My director wanted my character to be rough and earthy, and we believed a cockney accent portrayed this well. As we developed my physicalisation, using large hip movements and a slumped, rugged posture, I found that my vocalisation and emotion changed and developed simultaneously. This reinforced Bruder’s idea that “every physical action will give rise to an emotional condition” (Bruder et al, 1986, p. 72). I was happy to develop my character in this way, using physicalisation to tell the story of ‘The Trial’ whilst reflecting our chosen genres. Elsam reiterates; “If you build a performance from predetermined emotions, your acting will become generalised, predictable, and unresponsive to the other actors” (Elsam, 2006, p. 120). This was an effective way of creating something unpredictable and innovative to reflect our company manifesto and hopefully a successful piece of theatre.

Works Cited

Bruder, Melissa et al (1986) A Practical Handbook for the Actor, New York: Random House.

Chubbuck, Ivana (2004) The Power of the Actor, London; Penguin Group.

Elsam, Paul (2006) Acting Characters, London: A&C Black.

Miller, Bruce (2010) The Scene Study Book, Milwaukee: Limelight Editions.

Thomas, James (2009) Script Analysis, Oxford: Elsevier.

Character Development: The Bailiff, Huld and The Chorus

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As an actor I found that The Trial would be an excellent play to experiment with characters, particularly because the surrealist and absurd world that Berkoff creates allows for characters to be pushed to their absolute limit. Lucy stated that we are to make our characters grotesque; therefore the nature of the play and the way it is written allows us to create these grotesque images. On particular challenge for myself as an actor was to constantly keep up with the fast pace of the play, which is both physically demanding and difficult due to the specific blocking. It’s important that the characters reflect this grotesque imagery. I found that taking influence from the stock characters of Commedia dell’ arte was important to me in creating exaggerated characters especially as big gestures are used to emphasise meaning.

The Bailiff was my first character. He enters the scene questioning others onstage if they have seen his wife and then proceeds to tell a story to Joseph K, describing how the student and magistrate attempt to steal the laundress (his wife) away from him. Before the characterisation, Lucy stated that she wanted my character to have a cockney accent with a cocky, arrogant attitude. When attempting to use this in character development I felt that it was necessary to walk with a swagger whilst turning my head and then turning my body to follow which looked very comical. During a rehearsal, I had a breakthrough; I explored the character using the walk of Il Capitano from Commedia dell’ arte. John Rudlin states that Il Capitano uses the “Mountain walk: the heels of his high boots come down first then the foot rolls onto the ball. Straight back… Big strides… Feet on the ground, head in the clouds” (Rudlin, 1994) When using this I felt that it reflected the arrogant, cocky self-important nature of the character, particularly when kicking out my feet and holding my head up.

When reading the character of Huld, I attempted to bring uniqueness to the character, which was particularly important when defining a distinct difference between the two characters. I found that although the lines of Huld were insinuating he was suffering from illness such as “Don’t ask, I’m terrible. Getting worse, difficult to sleep and I’m losing my strength daily”. I found that it would be even funnier, if not more ridiculous if he was lying to crave attention. I explored this further by emphasising the fact he is over-dramatically pretending to be at a loss of breath for during this one line. As Lucy stated that Huld was to be sitting in a chair for the performance, I envisaged that this chair would be a worn armchair, in a rustic old house with a fireplace. With this in mind I envisaged that Huld would be relaxed in the environment he is in and perhaps gives reason to the way he treats Block. One struggle when portraying how I envisaged Huld was that I wanted the audience to see him as pathetic and useless at being a lawyer yet show that he still appears to take great pride in his work, unaware of how deluded he is. One character I found that helped this was Commedia dell’ arte’s Il Dottore as I found a few similarities between the two. Rudlin states that Il Dottore is “From Bologna, the home city of Italy’s oldest University, not that he ever went to it. Specialises in everything, and can talk a load of old boloney about it.” (Rudlin, 1994, p.101) Although it isn’t implied that Huld specialises in everything, I found it useful that he could specialise in being a lawyer without understanding it, nor even having studied it. Particularly as he rambles, stating such line as:

“The legal records for the case with charges are not available to the council for the defence. Consequently, one doesn’t know with any precision what charges to draw up in the first plea.”

Another interesting connection I found with Il Dottore is that he “Makes crude sexual jokes and has a weakness for pornography” (Rudlin, 1994, p.101). I felt that this could be related to Huld’s odd (almost lustful) relationship with Leni. This is shown in the line when he is describing her, stating “It’s a peculiarity of hers in finding nearly all accused men attractive, she sleeps with all of them and they all love her. I must apologise to K, she tells me these affairs to amuse me, which I allow.” This was particularly useful as it gave an almost creepy undertone to the character which I emphasised through the grotesqueness of my character.

One of the greatest challenges when performing as the chorus is the necessity to make sure that we were all working in unison and as one. Because of this you can feel if one cast member slows down which could jeopardise the play entirely, although at first we struggled, after a few rehearsals, we began to move together and work off one another, particularly in terms of lines and how they were delivered. One thing that influenced me when working with the Chorus was exploring what Peter Brook describes as ‘The Holy Theatre”. When discussing ‘The Holy Theatre’ he states that “it could be called The Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible: the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts” (Brook, 1968, p.47) it was a great challenge to find this raw connection between one another.

Lucy would often warm up with a workshop in which Stuart (Joseph K) would leave the room and we would decide who would choose to lead whatever movement they wanted and we all had to mimic this person. Stuart would then enter and he would have to guess who was leading the movements. The more we repeated this. The more Stuart would struggle to guess as we began to move almost simultaneously.

When behind the frames, we could treat it as though they were gateways, staring into the world of Joseph K. This meant that we were not limited to staring out at the audience, but we could also react to what is taking place onstage. Particularly as we can use out eyes to judge Joseph K and almost criticize his actions with our eyes.

I found that I struggled at first with staying fast paced throughout the performance, particularly because the blocking was so concentrated and precise. As we went through the play it almost felt as though you had to think about the action that was ahead of you whilst you were doing your current one. I found that once I had my costume, I found it far easier to create the grotesque faces, particularly because I found it easier to concentrate.

What I found most fun about the chorus was that you are not limited to one character; a chorus member can be anything from an overly camp office worker, to a cockney clothes washer to a gargoyle in a church! The grotesque nature of the performance allows you to push these mini characters to their absolute limit thus keeping the audience interested because they don’t know what’s coming next.

Brook, P., 1968. The Empty Space. London: the Penguin Group.

Rudlin, J., 1994. Commedia dell’ arte: An actor’s handbook. New York: Routledge.