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!