Character Developing #1 | Auditions

Caricature- "a picture, a description, or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect"

Today's lessons in which we had to audition for different character roles by reading lines and improvising, I found quite challenging. I felt I knew the characters well enough to improvise a physicality, voice etc. but I didn't feel I shown my full potential. When reading as characters like Sylvia and Bonnie ( characters that I consider less eccentric) I think I struggle to commit to that character who display the themes of innocence from the play. As I have mentioned before in my 'Stand Up Comedy' blog, the more eccentric, 'berkovian' and exaggerated a character is, the easier I find I can commit to it. Otherwise, I notice I come out of character easier and struggle to create a physicality that is closer to a naturalistic one- like my own.

After reading the play and getting to know the characters initially, I was interested in playing Sir Willoughby, Mrs Brisket and Miss Slighcarp. I think with these principle characters who demonstrate the themes of corruption and mistreatment etc. I could create a real 'caricature' if I had the chance to work on the character development overtime. 

Other smaller roles such as the Doctor and the Inspector I feel can 'make' the production. Although they are not featured in a lot of the scenes, frequent appearances of grotesque characters can compliment the style of the play, especially one such as this (similar to Dickens productions I have previously seen.) Both of these characters can evoke assessment of the justice and symbolize the view of a moral civilization (ther audience aswell as the actual two characters) interrupting this odd series of events in the play which seems to lack justice, fairness and morality.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase | Thoughts After Reading & Themes

After reading the play I noticed how important it must be to have bold characters. Without realising, I began to compare the characters to ones in Charles Dickens, Rhoald Dahl's work and Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice because of how important the characters are when bringing these stories to life.  Like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, these literary works rely so much on the potency of the animated characters. They begin to symbolise themes within the texts, the caricatures created  remain an essential part of the storytelling and their characteristics are explored through the physical representation. This extract from Rhoald Dahl's 'Twits' I came across a while ago is completely relatable to how we as a class should explore the play.

Themes

The themes that stood out to me the most straight away were Mistreatment, Power, Greed etc.

The theme of 'Appearance being Deceiving' seemed to stand out to me a lot-  not only the most obvious way like the villains of the play hiding the mistreatment from many but the manipulation involved 

The theme of Greed is intoduced in the outset of the play in the most basic analogy of the word- being greed of food demonstrated by Mr Grimshaw on the train scene with Sylvia. As the storyline progresses Mrs Briskett is revealed to be similar, and her greed is also foreshadowed by food/cheese. Both of these characters' greed for food have can be seen as a symbol of their greed for the orphanage expense etc,