In order to fully immerse myself into the performance, it is vital I know my character inside and out. In order to fully understand my character, I needed to do some basic ground work immediately. John Abbott believes, “actors have to understand what it is like to be someone other than themselves – and that is very complicated” (Abbott, 2015, p.86). Therefore, I decided to use one of Abbott’s exercises called ’85 Questions’. This exercise poses questions such as ‘what is your favourite food and drink?’ and allows you to gain authentic knowledge to your character’s physce.

Due to our performance being very physical with little spoken word, it is very important I connect with my body. Stanislavski states “the language of the body is the key that can unlock the soul” (Hadnagy, 2014, p.81). In order to understand my character’s inner workings, I therefore had to experiment with what my body was capable of doing. Once again, I used an exercise from John Abbott called ‘animal identification’. According to Abbott, the actor should ‘get inside the head of an animal. The way it looks at you, the way it looks at other animals. The way it tilts it head or moves its neck.’ (Abbott, 2015, p. 92). Due to my character being very vulnerable I chose to study a fox. To begin with, foxes are very light on their feet with a short burst of pace. I am hoping to replicate this characteristic on the bike, as I will be nippy on my feet but will have short bursts of pace when the tension on the stage gets higher. Furthermore, foxes are usually seen by themselves and are very apprehensive in their movement. The fox often leads with its head first, then the feet shortly follow. This characteristic is useful for when my character is caring for the orchid as he is apprehensive and unsure of the object. Therefore, leading with my head builds up a suspicion of the flower. This is important as the question becomes clearer as to whether the orchid is the object making me sane or insane.

Works Cited:

Abbott, J. (2015) The Acting Book. London. Nick Hern Books.

Hadnagy, C. (2014) Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security. USA: John Wiley & Sons.