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| Building a Character | |
|---|---|
| Title | Building a Character |
| Subject | Character creation |
Building a Character
Building a Character is the organized process by which creators craft fictional or performative personas for William Shakespeare, Stanford University, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Hollywood, BBC Television, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Broadway theatre, Metropolitan Opera, and Bolshoi Theatre. It informs work by practitioners associated with Mikhail Bulgakov, Anton Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, Euripides.
Creators who engage in Building a Character draw on methods codified across traditions exemplified by Konstantin Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen, Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, Suzuki Tadashi, Augusto Boal, Bertolt Brecht, and institutions such as Juilliard School, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Yale School of Drama, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, École Philippe Gaulier to produce roles for productions at The Globe Theatre, Royal National Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center.
In theatrical and narrative practice Building a Character denotes the synthesis of biography, motivation, voice, and physicality developed by practitioners in line with traditions from Alexander Dumas, Henrik Ibsen, Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, and theorists like Aristotle and G. I. Gurdjieff. It intersects with dramaturgy used at Royal Court Theatre, narrative theory from Northwestern University, and screenplay craft taught at American Film Institute and London Film School.
Common techniques include script analysis rooted in approaches by Konstantin Stanislavski, psychological realism advanced by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, physical characterization informed by Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, vocal work from Maria Callas and Enrico Caruso, and improvisation practiced in the lineage of Viola Spolin, Keith Johnstone, The Second City, Groundlings and Improvisation, Inc.. Methods span checklist-driven beat work used by David Mamet, arc plotting favored by Robert McKee, and archetypal mapping derived from Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.
Stage actors at Old Vic and film performers in studios such as Pinewood Studios or Universal Studios adapt Building a Character to live and recorded formats; television writers on BBC One, HBO, Netflix, AMC (TV channel), and Channel 4 apply serial development methods; novelists at Columbia University programs use interior monologue techniques credited to Marcel Proust and James Joyce; game designers at Nintendo, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft integrate mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft to produce playable personas. Comics creators at Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics and graphic novelists influenced by Alan Moore and Frank Miller employ visual shorthand alongside dialogue.
Ethical practice invokes guidelines from institutions like American Psychological Association and debates paralleling cases involving Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Rian Johnson, Ridley Scott about representation, consent, and portrayal of trauma. Psychological safety draws on research from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University, and clinical frameworks by Anna Freud, Aaron Beck, Marsha Linehan, and Irvin Yalom to manage vicarious trauma and boundary-setting in rehearsal rooms at venues such as La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and Kneehigh Theatre.
Notable examples include character work for Hamlet staged by Royal Shakespeare Company directors; the development of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver through methods associated with Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader; origin of Hannibal Lecter in novels by Thomas Harris and films by Jonathan Demme; ensemble construction in A Streetcar Named Desire under directors linked to Elia Kazan; and serial character arcs across seasons of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and The Crown.
Workshops at Actors Studio, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Tisch School of the Arts, Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and community programs affiliated with National Endowment for the Arts commonly use exercises: sensory recall exercises inspired by Konstantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg; improvisational drills from Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone; viewpoint and viewpoint scoring from Anne Bogart and SITI Company; biography-writing exercises modeled on curricula from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and National Institute of Dramatic Art.
Category:Acting