My friend always mesmerized me when she was on the stage. Her superb performance deserved a spotlight considering so much effort she put on a single performance. Being a member of a theatre club for two years, I've always seen her working hard on her character to perform well in the play. Few months advance from the performance, she began to prepare to "be" the character. To become the character, she followed these steps: she read the script for several times, analyzed the character, and finally brought the character into life.
First of all, what she did is to read the script repeatedly and thoroughly until she understood the whole structure of a story. She tried to understand not only the story but also the relationship between each character in the scenario. Understanding these was considered as a key of this process because no character could stand alone without a story and a relationship with other characters. She read again and again if she couldn't understand some parts of the script. At the same time, she made brief notes about her role; for example, she wrote down the role's rough image in her head and characteristics that could be inferred while reading down the script.
After getting the gist of a script, she started to analyze the character. Based on the notes she wrote while reading the script, she began to make some specific details of the character's characteristic. To illustrate, once there was a character named Jolene. Jolene was a very rough character which males in the play feared of. However, in this step, she put some other characteristics, such as Jolene being a shy girl when it comes to love, to make the character much more attractive. In addition, she organized the emotion the character might have felt in certain situations to feel much easier to act.
Finally, she brought the character into reality by deciding the appearance, tone of the voice and adding the details to her character. When deciding the appearance, there are many things to consider about with a lot of conversation with staffs and other actors to follow the entire concept of the play. When she was playing an Otaku as her role, she had to think about the hairstyle, clothes to wear and a makeup. After few days of thinking, she decided to tie her hair loose as if she didn't wash her hair for few days. Then, she decided to wear a big T-Shirt with stretched neck. She also decided to put no makeup except on her eyes. Not only her appearance, but she also decided what kind of voice and tone she's going to say. Then, she added some details with the character's motion to reveal the characteristic of her role.
Being on the stage requires a lot of effort. They have to spend few months to read and understand the script, analyze character and bring the character into the reality. I can definitely say the process is very challenging, which requires a lot of time and thoughts. However, being under the spotlight and getting the ovations of audiences makes them to forget those hard times and feel the great achievement.
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