Building Character from the Ground Up:  

Approaching Character from a Playwright and Actor Perspective

TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED:  

• What are the most exciting characters to play/write and why?

• What is the first thing you do when creating a character?  

  Actor: preparing for a first rehearsal. Playwright:  Starting a new play.

• How do you ensure that your characters sound unique?

  Actors:  i.e. Inflection, rhythm, tempo, how do you act different people that don’t all sound the same?

  Playwrights: i.e. speech patterns, vocabulary choice, how do you write different sounding people? 

• Actors:  How do you approach a character’s physicality?

• Playwrights:  Do you think about physicality when you write a character?

• Playwrights: When dealing with comedy, how do you ensure you create different comedic rhythms, so all characters don’t sound the same?

• Actors:  How do you think about creating comedic timing that may be different from your own?

• How do you handle writing and/or creating characters that are different from you? 

• How do you handle writing or acting characters who have had extreme experiences that you have not experienced?

• How do you handle acting or writing real people? Is there a difference if they are living or dead? 

• Playwrights: How do you ensure you haven’t written a two dimensional character? 

• Actors: How do  you ensure you have fleshed out your character, so it doesn’t become set dressing?

• How do you handle writing or acting characters who you dislike?

• What are steps you can do currently to strengthen your ability to create exciting, unique, and diverse characters?

This is our chance to talk with each other about topics that we as artists, creatives and humans need to have. The key is we talk to and with each other. There is no panel or special guest that is smarter on a topic. We are the collective smarter panel.

Seating Extremely Limited Only 15 Spots

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