From the Archives- Today's Creating a Character Class with Jenna Gabriel

July 22, 2012

Hello Again!

I was pretty excited going into today’s class, and very anxious to share my love of creative characters with the group. I was so lucky to have such a receptive and enthusiastic group!

As our warmup, I asked everyone to share their favorite character of all time and act out a favorite line of theirs. We saw everything from Homer Simpson to The Joker to the Witch Doctor from “Princess and the Frog.” After getting all of the different characters in our bodies, we sat for a few minutes to talk about the different kinds of characters that there could be. It’s tough to extrapolate the big picture from favorite characters, to recognize that Superman is a specific character while Hero is the archetype, but our group was able to name a lot of types of characters!

I had been prepared with pictures of a few:

Types of Characters: a King

Types of Characters: a Villain

Types of Characters: a Parent and a Child

Types of Characters: a Hero

Types of Characters: a Lover

Types of Characters: a Clown

but they surprised me by adding a few characters into the mix that I hadn’t thought of, like a detective!

Then, the conversation got even more complicated as we talked about how within different types is where the fun is: What makes two heroes different from each other? Two kings? Two villains? The group was dead on with their answers: how they feel, how they act, and what they wear. Amazing, right?!

Which brought us to the crux of class: creating our own characters! It started with the “what they wear” part of character, as each student picked a costume piece and began exploring the many different ways they could wear it. Once they’d settled on one, I photographed them each in costume with their face expressing everything the costume made them feel. And together, the group answered questions based on those photographs to help each other flesh out their characters: What do you see? What is the costume piece? What emotions does it look like this character is feeling? What type of character is this? What do they do? Where are they from? What is their name?

Teddy trying on his costume piece

The class answers to character questions about Nicky’s character, Rocky

Teddy’s photograph as the class discusses his character

And finally, these characters all got to meet each other and go on an adventure! We traveled from the hills of Britain to the woods of Australia, we saw zoos and magic carpet rides and bullfights… It was amazing!

 Here are their final characters:

Nicky as Rocky the Australian Cowboy

Kendall as Kevin the Wolf

Teddy as John the Magician

At the end of class, Teddy shared that he loved being able to play at Daytime Moon, and that he’d learned that “there were many unlimited ways of creating a character.”

Successful class? I sure think so! But check out the highlight reel to see for yourself:

See you next time!
Jenna

From the Archives-Creating a Character!

July 20, 2012 

“An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.”

—Chuck Jones

***
 

I love this quote. Because it’s so true, right? “Boy meets girl” would always be the same story if it weren’t for the specific boys and the specific girls. “Whodunnit” would always be the same mystery if it weren’t for the unique quirks that every villian leaves in their wake as clues. At their core, every character is an archetype: a mother, a lover, a villian, a hero. At their core, every character is a human. And so, creating a character both takes us far outside the realm of who we are and brings us much closer to understanding our core as a human. Embodying another person asks of each of us to understand the drives and feelings of another person, to be (even when the character is cruel or greedy or angry) empathetic to a fault.

It’s work that I’ve always loved doing as an actor, and work that I’m thrilled to share with the students in Daytime Moon’s “Creating A Character” workshop tomorrow afternoon. In all of the full programs I’ve taught, we’ve put so much emphasis on the story that character work has always been secondary. We explore our students’ characters through the lens of their experience within the plot. But, as Chuck Jones so eloquently commands: forget the plot! In my class, we’ll have two hours to simply focus on character. We’ll be creating individuals that maybe one day we could make a story out of, who surely could meet each other in the street or at a party and find some adventures to embark on. But the crux of what we’ll be doing Saturday is simply to find the people–Who are the craziest, funniest, most exciting people we can imagine? And how can we imbue them with a backstory so they become living, breathing, feeling beings?

Check out some of these examples of epic archetypal characters. So much fun to play with!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching all of the other workshop teachers have a blast with our participants. I’ve observed their classes, have taken photographs and videos, and helped participants tweet their experiences during breaks. It’s been inspirational and enjoyable, but more than anything I’ve felt the itch to play! Watching the other amazing teachers bring so much joy to our students is like sitting on the bench as the rest of the lineup bats through the order. Finally, I feel like I’m in the on deck circle, and I’m so excited to see the students tomorrow I can hardly wait!

If you can’t make it to class, I hope that you’ll follow the students’ experiences on twitter @Daytime_Moon, on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/DaytimeMoonCreations, and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/DaytimeMoonCreations. I can’t wait to share all our updates with you!

One of my favorite Chuck Jones creations. Even if he’s the “bad guy” in the roadrunner cartoons, you can’t help but like him. Such a classic character!

So join me tomorrow as we play with “the key, the drum and the fife.” We’re having fun with personality! Plot-free.

See you in class,

Jenna

From the Archives- It's almost the halfway point!!

November 10, 2011

That’s right! Can you believe it? Where has the time gone?!?! We’re nearing the halfway point in our two programs and I have so many amazing updates to share!

Our group at the Cooke Center Academy is already “yes, and…”ing itself into a full script! The group is huge (fourteen young adults!!) and full of such a melting pot of personalities and interests, but they’ve all really come together to help write this play. Starting with fun storytelling exercises and looking to Harpo Marx, Lucille Ball, and Charlie Chaplin for examples of how we talk without using words, the group came up with the idea of setting their final play at summer camp. We’ve already created scenes about campers making new friends, helping each other learn how to make a fire, and coaching a friend through when he or she is feeling homesick. It’s been pretty incredible to watch and I can’t wait to see what they come up with tomorrow–we’re doing some more improv and by next week we’ll have a script to start rehearsing! Michelle and I have been videotaping, and our favorite photographer Ani Tomasic came in last week, so hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have some footage and photographs to share with you all!

Our program at the PIT is off to an amazing start as well. We have five actors in the class who are all very different, but it makes for such a great group. They’ve really bonded with each other and formed an incredible ensemble, and have also formed a strong relationship with the teachers and Nagisa, our intern from the Cooke Center Academy who is assisting Meredith with writing the final script. Backstage secret: after playing a really cool game called “Night at the Museum” where each of the participants played an exhibit that came to life, Meredith came up with the idea of a play that’s set in a museum where all of the paintings come to life and have an adventure. We don’t know yet what that adventure entails, but the group’s already started creating characters, so I know it’s going to be pretty spectacular!

Michelle and Jake have been hard at work on getting the video blog going so that we can share lots of exciting updates with you in a more interactive way. For the launch, Jake’s been editing up a storm, putting together a great video that shows some of the games we play and input from our actors. Eventually, our goal is to share an update after each class so that every week, you’ll get to hear some fun updates via video from some of our actors! I’ve seen the drafts of the inaugural video; I think you’ll love it when it goes live!

Pictures and video are still to come from our program at the Cooke Center Academy, but in the meantime, I can share with you some great pictures and videos from the PIT. The pictures are from throughout, but the three videos are from our Halloween class, where we played a game called “MASK-erade.” Everyone got a chance to put on a pretend mask and become a character for the group to guess, and here are some of our favorites!

Teddy went first, check it out!

Jeffrieal became a baseball player when he put his mask on:

And then Nicky drew from J.R.R. Tolkien for inspiration to become a wizard:

And here are some photos:

Jeffrieal and I

Jake, Nagisa and Teddy posing as a rock band during a game of "Group Photo"

Talia and Maya being a snake exhibit during the first game of "Night at the Museum"

Jeffrieal showing what it looks like when you're angry

Can’t wait to share more with you as things progress!

Jenna

From the Archives--Superheroes and Songs!

November 15, 2010 

Hello!

So we’ve passed the halfway point in our program…hard to believe how fast time flies!! Only two more sessions before our FINAL PERFORMANCE!!!

Things at Daytime Moon have been going very well. We’ve created superheroes, banished monsters, played pretend with all sorts of emotions, and debuted a few more awesome songs–we promise there’s a CD coming! There are a lot of pretty big website updates coming, so stay tuned. But in the meantime, I thought I’d tease you with a few great pictures from our Saturday sessions:

Sean as Michael Jackson at our Halloween session

Christina and Jake pretending to be angry

 James and Teddy pretending to be Siskel and Ebert

Nick and Liz

from L-R Teddy, Sean, me, Jake and Nick

Cheers!
Jenna