Week 3

Exciting developments happened in week 3. I began working with small groups of the 5th grade students in a more personal setting to help them along their characterization process. They are incredibly creative, imaginative, and fun. I asked them to give me ideas about how they viewed their characters' personalities and what methods they could use to portray those personalities to an audience. They started engaging with their characters more even in the short session I spent with them. I look forward to continued work with the 5th graders as a more coherent impression of the age group starts to form.

A director at GCU also sent word this week that he would be willing to let me observe some rehearsals for his upcoming performance of the show "West Side Story." The opportunity will fill in the gap at the older end of the age spectrum for the project by allowing me an insight into the acting habits of college students.

I'm nearing the end of Chekhov's marvelous book on acting (more to come on that) and beginning to read a fascinating series of scientific articles on the relationship between acting and empathy. My hope is to tie in developmental psychology with my examination of age-related characterization differences to lend the project a more robust perspective.

Thanks for reading.

Week 2

The project is ramping up as week 2 comes to a close. My observations of the 5th grade students thus far have hinted at the presence of potentially interesting differences in their approach to characterization, even in comparison to a group as close in age as the 7th graders. One behavioral artifact of the divergence is the palpably lower average confidence level in the younger students. Naturally, the confidence level of individual students differed significantly within each class, but, on the whole, the 5th graders seem less sure of themselves in an acting environment. I'm exploring possible explanations for the difference, including the amount of previous acting experience among the students in each class. I should be able to unearth more information in the coming weeks as I start working on characterization with the 5th graders who have larger roles in the summer camp musical. I'm also going to consider how the confidence factor should affect the way I craft the survey which will yield the majority of this project's data.

A second branch of my project-related activities also began this week as I started working as the characterization director for BASIS Peoria's Spring musical, "The Little Mermaid." The musical cast contains actors from nearly every grade level (5th-12th), making it an exciting opportunity to examine age-related disparities in the characterization process. I'll be assisting actors as they develop their respective characters and making observations along the way as always. More on that next week after I meet with the first group of actors to discuss their characters.

 
Lastly, I provided a quote from Michael Chekhov as food for thought earlier today. The visual nature of theatre necessitates the dedication of special attention to an actor's physical movement on stage. According to Chekhov, physicality is one of the most fundamental and effective means of portraying a character. I think it will become equally necessary for me to give it appropriate attention as I observe and work with the actors and build the survey.

Thanks for reading.

Chekhov's Vision

"As actors and actresses, we must rejoice in the possession of our physical faculties. We must experience joy in the use of our hands, arms, body etc. Without this appreciation and realization of the body and its many possibilities, we cannot perform as artists. You should feel a flow of joy because you are alive. Your body will feel full of life. That is what you must give from the stage. Your life. No less. That is art: to give all you have. And what have you? Your life-nothing more. And to give life means to feel life throughout your whole being."-Michael Chekhov

Week 1

This week, I finished my personal directing experience with 7th graders at BASIS. We put on "Alice in Wonderland" for the students' family and friends after several months of rehearsal. Our small class was responsible for organizing the various components of a successful production and all of the students did a fantastic job. It was an honor to work with them. Several weeks from now, I plan on surveying the class to begin collecting data on the middle school age group for my study.

I also started observing a 5th grade choir class as they start rehearsing for a musical about summer camp. The 5th graders will be the youngest age group incorporated into the project; I intend to survey them about their acting at some point in the future.

Finally, I began reading the first of several source materials for the project: On the Technique of Acting by Michael Chekhov. Chekhov's theories will serve as the informative foundation of my project by providing me with a specific conceptualization of how the character creation process fits into acting as a larger activity.

See you next week!  

Hello!

Hi,

My name is Alonzo Beatty, I am a high school senior at BASIS Peoria. For those who don't know, the senior project at BASIS is an opportunity to explore a topic of interest to each individual student. In the past two years, I have discovered a passion for theatre by participating extensively in our drama program here at school. Therefore, I decided to mold my senior project around one of my favorite aspects of theatre: characterization (a.k.a the multi-faceted process of creating a character's personality, mannerisms, etc. in a performance).

From my official project proposal: "I hope my research will reveal any differences or similarities in the perception and development of characters in theatre across age groups. I am primarily interested in exploring whether school age children have noticeably different means of creating and viewing characters when compared to adults. What mental process does each group go through when preparing a role? What are the categorization trends for each character within the groups (based on the theories of Chekhov)? Do the groups have similar impressions of similar characters (i.e. do they independently produce similar descriptions of characters)? How much does character perception vary within both groups? Ideally, I’d also like to get data from non-actors to gain insight into potential differences in perception between people who choose to pursue acting and those who don’t."

I intend to gather data via a curated survey distributed to each age group. The survey will measure how the actors characterize their roles, yielding tangible data for direct comparison. I will be updating this blog on a weekly basis with any progress I make in my research.

Thanks for reading!