The Flint Street Nativity - Play, by Tim Firth (15) (Character development)

                                                      

Today we did an activity for the whole of the second act: when we were supposed to be children we were our adult characters, and when we were supposed to be adults we were our children characters. We did this so we got an idea of how our adult characters would react around each other in a different scenario, and so we could see what the adult section would look like with our different interactions and relationships.

In the video above we are our adult characters performing the children's lines from the script. I decided to look around at the other characters constantly, as if I was checking that what they were doing was correct, as my character is a perfectionist. I also acted quite laid back, as I felt my character believed they had more important things to be doing. I also believe that my character would be too busy checking that everybody else was doing the correct things to be focusing on herself. Looking back, I feel like I should have intervened with other characters more, correcting them, and that I would have been more theatrical when saying the actual lines in the nativity (as Sarah Bennet is a perfectionist as she teaches Jenny to do "proper acting like what y'see at The Empire or on television").

I think that the adult section as children was more successful. I managed to maintain my voice throughout this scene as well as my body language. The interaction between mine and Rhiannon's characters was completely altered as we strongly dislike each other as children. Therefore, every line was more sarcastic and had more attitude as we are constantly trying to be better than each other. Although we learned more about the similarities and differences between our children character's relationships and interactions and our adult character's relationships and interactions, we did struggle to remember our lines. This was because we had to really focus on the whole new atmosphere and environment created by using different voices, body languages and interactions.