David Jobling
Hairy Actor
September 24th 2008 07:48
As an actor I find facial hair quite the fascinating thing. Sometimes it is really important to transform the way you look in the process of realizing, or creating a character.
I most often prefer to be clean shaven as an individual but this year particularly I have noticed that I’ve had some facial hair related to a character in a play, rather than related to me as an individual.
What that boils down to in one respect is: my impression of how I would look if I were this other person, this character, combined with the information I would need to refer to in terms of finding guidelines on what was appropriate in the circumstances.
If that means playing a soldier in a particular time, or one who harkens back to a particular time, then I’d look at images depicting that time, or from that time to gather references. I may also look at images that I find inspire me or evoke the emotional profile of the character I’m developing.
Essentially the script informs the actor of the character. What does the character do? Why do they do it? When do they do it? How do they do it? What are their objectives, super objectives? What are their circumstances? Who do they related to and how do these people reflect on them or speak about them; and what about how other people speak about them, people whom they do not relate to.
There are many questions to be asked and ideas to be understood; particularly when you are playing more than one character in a play and want to differentiate between them without too much fuss.
Back to facial hair. I recently played three roles in a Shakespeare play (Anthony and Cleopatra) with real facial hair with a cap on to mask my head hair as one character, then a character without obvious facial or head hair due to masking, and then a third character with facial hair and head hair unmasked.
To capture certain nuances of the play as well as contribute to the texture of my characters as part of the thread woven into the play, I was able to have some facial hair that didn’t become a real problem in terms of the audience just noticing it was the same guy with the same mustache all along.
I most often prefer to be clean shaven as an individual but this year particularly I have noticed that I’ve had some facial hair related to a character in a play, rather than related to me as an individual.
What that boils down to in one respect is: my impression of how I would look if I were this other person, this character, combined with the information I would need to refer to in terms of finding guidelines on what was appropriate in the circumstances.
If that means playing a soldier in a particular time, or one who harkens back to a particular time, then I’d look at images depicting that time, or from that time to gather references. I may also look at images that I find inspire me or evoke the emotional profile of the character I’m developing.
Essentially the script informs the actor of the character. What does the character do? Why do they do it? When do they do it? How do they do it? What are their objectives, super objectives? What are their circumstances? Who do they related to and how do these people reflect on them or speak about them; and what about how other people speak about them, people whom they do not relate to.
There are many questions to be asked and ideas to be understood; particularly when you are playing more than one character in a play and want to differentiate between them without too much fuss.
Back to facial hair. I recently played three roles in a Shakespeare play (Anthony and Cleopatra) with real facial hair with a cap on to mask my head hair as one character, then a character without obvious facial or head hair due to masking, and then a third character with facial hair and head hair unmasked.
To capture certain nuances of the play as well as contribute to the texture of my characters as part of the thread woven into the play, I was able to have some facial hair that didn’t become a real problem in terms of the audience just noticing it was the same guy with the same mustache all along.
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