Character Creation Exercises: Hot Seating, Improvised Scenes, Create the previous scene, Working with physical objectives, Playing objectives & Finding useful physical objectives

HOW TO DO HOT SEATING: Firstly, you place a chair in quite a reasonable distance away from the audience who will be questioning the character in the hot seat. A person is then chosen to sit in the chair placed in front of the audience. As soon as that person sits down in that chair, they automatically should become their character, leaving any of their own personal traits behind. Once they sit down, become their character and the audience sees that they are ready, the audience will begin to ask questions about their character so they find out more and more information about them.

I think this is a very helpful exercise to do as it helps to develop your character and not only do other people find out more about your character but you will find out more about them too. There will be occasions where other people may ask the questions you haven't asked yourself about your character! If that happens, it'll teach you to get prepared to think of an answer that is relevant and makes sense about your character. Hot seating gives you the opportunity to think quick on your feet as you may been to do that during your performance. It helps to make you create more of a depth to your character instead of leaving the character's pages blank without content. This exercise allows you to create another story for your character rather than the one you already know.

IMPROVISED SCENES: In an improvised scene, you need a stimulus. Anything that your scene will evolve around. For example, the stimulus in my scene is the fact that Alex and Joseph are seeing each other after half a year of being apart. If I had to do an improvised scene on that, it'll again like hot seating allow me to think quite on my feet. However, within an improvised scene, there should be NO REPETITION WHATSOEVER! After all, it is called improvisation! If you begin to repeat, you are doing something wrong. Take your time with your scene: don't let your mind take control of the scene, let your body do the work.

Web definition of 'improvisation': a creation spoken or written or composed extemporaneously (without prior preparation).

Improvised scenes are very useful in becoming a successful actor/actress because it helps develop quick thinking. Improvised scenes might give you different ideas to incorporate within your scene and more of an understanding of your character. Given that it's improvisation, you don't need to remember lines which will help you to feel more free within the improvised scene. Hopefully, you'll be able to transfer that feeling of being comfortable and free within your improvised scene to your actual performance. 

CREATE THE PREVIOUS SCENES: To create a previous scene, you will need to use the information you have on not only your character's given circumstances but also the other character's given circumstances that you are also working with in your scene. This should help you to have an idea of what the previous scene could be before yours. Also, you would need to think about your character's first emotion/objective at the very beginning of your scene. What made them have this emotion/objective? Creating a previous scene will help you find out!

Creating a previous scene will help you to analyse your character's emotions more thoroughly by thinking about how they were feeling before your scene. That'll help you to act out your character more realistically when you know what their emotion was before and be able to work from that. Doing this exercise creates a whole other story for your character. It'll develop another set of emotions and feelings that you can work from and lead on from it into your actual scene. Creating a previous scene will not only give you a clearer understand of your character's emotions but also maybe being able to interpret in your their given circumstances more.

WORKING WITH PHYSICAL OBJECTIVES, PLAYING OBJECTIVES & FINDING USEFUL OBJECTIVES: Working with physical objectives has been quite a challenge for me. However, I feel as if I have been able to tackle that challenge well and accomplish it. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement in an actor/actress' acting skills. In order to work out your character's physical objectives, you need to look at your character's lines and also the other characters' lines that you're working with. You will need to work with the people you're acting with to see what your objectives could be throughout the play and make sure they fit the emotion of your character. However, make sure your objective is PHYSICAL! If you cannot physically do your objective without speaking, your objective isn't right. If you are able to do it physically, this will add more emotion, reality and belief to your character which will help the audience that will be watching understand your character let alone the scene more in depth.

Make sure when playing your objective, you remember to make sure it can be played physically and make it clear to the audience. Also, make sure they're useful objectives too. If it's not clear to them, that is an indication you're not doing it right. Don't work too hard on your objective; don't even think about it much either! Let your objective flow within the play, If your objective changes, make it clear to the audience that it has. Your objective is most likely to change if the other character you'e acting with changes theirs. This is why it's important to work with other actors/actresses in your scene to make sure everything flows correctly and you know what you're doing. Useful objectives will help acting your character more easy for you so it won't be difficult. If you begin to over complicate it, you'll make your role unrealistic.