Interpreting and Performing a Character

Interpreting and performing a character in drama involves a deep understanding of the role, creating a believable persona, and ensuring that the performance resonates with the audience. This process requires a combination of vocal, physical, and emotional skills, as well as a keen awareness of the performer-audience relationship. Below are key aspects of character interpretation and performance.

Interpreting and Performing a Character

Character Analysis:

Start by thoroughly reading the script and understanding your character’s background, motivations, relationships, and goals. Ask key questions like:

What does my character want?

What are their flaws, virtues, or inner conflicts?

How do they change throughout the play?

Contextual Understanding: Consider the character's role within the broader themes of the play, the time period, and the setting. This helps in forming the character’s psychological and emotional foundation.

Internal Life: Understand your character’s inner world—what they are thinking and feeling at any given moment. This informs how they speak, move, and interact with others.

Backstory: Even if the backstory isn’t explicitly given in the script, it is helpful to imagine events that have shaped your character. This gives depth and authenticity to your portrayal.

External Expression:

Bring the internal world of the character to life through physicality, facial expressions, and body language. The way a character moves and stands can reveal much about their emotional state, social status, and personality.

Pay attention to your vocal choices, such as tone, pitch, and pace, as these help express your character’s emotions and intentions.

Performer to Audience Relationship

Connection with the Audience:

As a performer, your relationship with the audience is crucial. The performer-audience connection can shape the energy and tone of the performance.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: In some performances (e.g., Brechtian theatre), actors might engage directly with the audience through direct address, making the audience aware of the fact that they are watching a performance. In these cases, the relationship is more interactive.

Subtle Engagement: In more naturalistic performances, the audience remains a silent observer, but subtle engagement still exists through emotional connection, tension, or empathy. The actor conveys truth and sincerity, allowing the audience to emotionally invest in the character’s journey.

Empathy and Emotional Range:

Good performers create empathy with the audience through strong character development. If the audience understands and feels for the character, the performance will be more impactful.

Pacing and Reaction: Your timing and reactions to other characters help to shape how the audience interprets your performance. Long pauses, emotional reactions, and varying pacing can heighten dramatic moments and allow the audience to reflect.

Engagement

Focus:

Always maintain focus during the performance, both in rehearsals and on stage. Your character’s actions should always feel purposeful and motivated.

In a group performance, each actor’s engagement affects the energy of the whole production. If one performer is disengaged, it can affect the entire performance.

Authenticity:

Stay true to your character’s truth in every moment. The audience will connect with authenticity. This requires you to engage emotionally and physically with the role, maintaining consistency in your portrayal across performances.

Health and Safety

Physical Awareness:

Ensure that you are physically prepared for the demands of the performance. This includes warming up before rehearsals and performances to prevent injury.

If performing physical theatre or scenes involving stunts, falls, or quick changes, ensure that the space is safe and clear of hazards. Always rehearse potentially risky movements slowly and safely before performing them at full speed.

Ergonomics:

Be mindful of your posture and the strain that long periods of rehearsal or performance might have on your body, particularly your back, neck, and vocal cords.

Mental Health:

Theatre can be emotionally demanding. It's essential to have techniques to unwind and manage stress before and after performances, especially when performing emotionally intense or challenging roles.

Vocal Skills

Your vocal skills are crucial for conveying your character’s emotions, intentions, and personality. The following elements of vocal technique help create a dynamic and believable performance.

Accents:

If your character speaks in a particular accent, ensure you practise it thoroughly. This adds authenticity to your character and sets them in a specific cultural or regional context.

Work with a dialect coach if necessary to refine your accent, paying attention to pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation.

Intonation:

Intonation refers to the rise and fall of the voice. It helps to express the emotional tone of the character’s speech. For example, a character feeling uncertain may have a rising intonation at the end of their sentences.

Use intonation to highlight key emotions or to make certain words or phrases stand out.

Emotional Range:

Your character’s emotional state should be conveyed through vocal changes. A character who is angry might shout or speak harshly, while one who is sad may speak in a softer, slower tone.

Be aware of your character’s emotional journey throughout the play and reflect that range through your voice.

Pitch:

Pitch refers to how high or low your voice is. Lower pitches can convey authority, power, or sadness, while higher pitches might suggest excitement, anxiety, or vulnerability.

Varying pitch is key to adding dynamism and avoiding monotony in your performance.

Pace:

The speed at which your character speaks should reflect their emotional state or intentions. A fast pace might suggest urgency, excitement, or panic, while a slower pace might indicate calmness, thoughtfulness, or sadness.

Use pacing to control the rhythm of the scene and enhance dramatic tension.

Pauses:

Pauses can be powerful. Strategic use of silence allows the audience to reflect on what has been said and can build tension.

A pause before or after a line can enhance its emotional weight, creating dramatic impact.

Phrasing:

Phrasing involves how lines are broken up and delivered. This affects the rhythm of the speech and can emphasise certain words or ideas.

Focus on how your character’s speech flows to convey meaning, urgency, or subtlety.

Physical Skills

Physicality is just as important as vocal work in creating a fully realised character. The following techniques help shape your character through movement and gestures.

Quick Change:

Quick changes involve switching between characters or changing the character’s physical attributes rapidly. In multi-role performances, being able to switch characters with speed and clarity is vital.

Rehearse your quick changes thoroughly so that transitions between characters are smooth and believable.

Bigger and Bigger:

This technique refers to gradually escalating the physicality of a performance, usually for comedic or exaggerated effects.

It can involve exaggerated gestures, facial expressions, or larger-than-life movements to intensify the impact of a scene or situation.

Multi-Rolling:

Multi-rolling is when an actor plays more than one character in a performance. This requires clear and distinct physical and vocal changes for each character to avoid confusion for the audience.

Distinguish each character with different posture, movement, gesture, and vocal patterns to make the transitions clear and effective.

Gestic Acting:

Gestic acting refers to conveying meaning and emotion through gestures rather than words. This can be particularly important in physical theatre, where movement and non-verbal communication are central to storytelling.

Emphasise exaggerated gestures and body language to represent emotions, intentions, or relationships.

Conclusion

Interpreting and performing a character involves a deep understanding of both internal and external characteristics. A successful performance combines vocal skills (such as accents, pitch, and emotional range), physical skills (like multi-rolling and gestic acting), and the ability to engage meaningfully with the audience. Throughout the process, maintaining health and safety is essential, ensuring both physical and mental well-being. Ultimately, a dynamic and authentic portrayal of a character requires a balanced use of voice, body, and emotional depth, while also considering the collaborative nature of the theatre-making process.