Exploring Acting Choices

The following two activities will help you build a picture of the characters in the performance, experiment with them in a new situation and contribute to your kete of knowledge for your live performance exam.

Practical activity:

Choose characters from your character profiles or who inspired you in the performance. In a group take the characters and expand their storylines. Devise or improvise a short scene that didn’t happen in the play but could add more information to that character's storyline. You could include some of the following drama conventions or elizabethan features in your scene:

• Soliloquy

• Asides

• Chorus

• Soundscape

• Frozen image

• Any features you have been exploring if you have been learning about Elizabethan Theatre.

Revision activity:

Using the family tree provided in the education pack, create an acting profile for each of the characters, using the following template:

Character description: name, age, type of person that they are

Costume and makeup: colour, material, what this says about their personality, how it impacted posture and movement

Relationships: who they are connected too and why

Motivations: what motivates their character and where do you think these motivations are coming from?

Actors use of body, voice, movement and space: think about what feels new, fresh and also classic about the actors choices.

Subtext: think about specific moments where a character was communicating through subtext.

Fatal flaw: a trait that will mean the character will meet a fatal end by the play's conclusion.

Favourite quote: