Practical Session #2 | Class Exercise: Finding Character's Objective

12.01.15

In today's lesson we did an exercise which helped me a lot to learn about the intentions and motivations that my character would have at the moment of the monologue.

The four things about my character that I picked for the 1st part of the exercise were;

• She loves her Mother unconditionally
• God, Jesus and her religion is the most important thing to her
• She has never seen ant TV, film or read a book other than the Bible
• She is very sure of herself

Her objective in the monologue is to explain what she sees that nobody else can.

In the 2nd part of the exercise we explored an improvisation in which I portrayed quite an awkward, uncomfortable and difficult character which we coupled up for. Beth and I noticed that both of our characters mention the death of a loved one in our monologues so we thought we could set this short scene in a grieving support group which  would also set the form of the conversation.

In that we both found it a bit challenging to come up with a rough idea of the dialogue but also found it rewarding having to accurately portray our characters' personalities in that scenario.

 After that Beth and I discussed a lot about our characters' real motivation and objective could be in the moment of our monologue as well as what they could be overall in the whole play itself. Here are some ideas I had for Agnes' character:

• Does she find comfort in this woman so want to confide? (who's essentially an outsider from the nunnery who Agnes may feel less judged by)
• Is Anges confessing to get attention?
• Does she want her visions to stop so seeking help?