Hello, my dears! How are you?
I confess I’ve been studying secretly! Haha! That provided me some meditating and relaxing time, and that inspired me to create a method of how to develop theatrical character, for opera or for theater. If you focus, you can do this training in one hour or one hour and a half. Let’s go!
- Talk about the character. What’s his(her) origin?
A dedicated reading of the entire script will bring you some interesting details of who and how is your character. You can keep those intuitive feelings you had about your character and test them on your body. Act with those feelings! Have fun with this script! And understand who was your character in the beginning of the script, how he/she have changed in the middle of the story and how those changes have affected him/her in the end of the story. - Is is possible to do a corporal score of you character?
Define the way your character walk. Just like a dance! Define his/her motion vectors. Is it possible that somebody, with the same mood, walk with a particularity you could use? Observe the way other people walk and, if needed, copy them. - Body warm up.
Do you know that sensation of warm body, when you’ve just ran and you almost can feel your blood running inside you? This is what I’m talking about.. - Walk through the stage (or your room, if you are training at home) and feel the physical characteristics you’ve just created. Try them. Use the motion vectors.
- While you are walking, ask somebody to say to you some key moments of the script. Use it to get inside your character. If you don’t have anyone to help you, you can do it by yourself. You just have to use a recorder and record your own voice with those instructions. And you can play them randomly, with long pauses. The main goal here is for you to have time to focus on your character, and to perceive his/her thoughts in different situations.
- After finding out how your character feels his/her body, try to tell the opera/theater script with his/her body. Do it so many times as you can.
- If you are doing an opera or musical, use the accompaniment and speak/sing specific parts of the song that already make sense for you.
- Try to sing the whole music.
- Be happy! Haha! Keep those sensations in your body and repeat this process again and again.