Creating a Character

Pixabay

Last Sunday afternoon was the final performance of the first play in which I've performed in close to twenty years. Three hours before the final show, my husband and I dropped our daughter off at the train station and sent her back to school. It was an emotional day, with too many good-byes, yet there were so many good moments. I loved my castmates and I loved the role I got to play. And, I was once again reminded of the similarities between creating a character for the stage and the page.

The role was substantial, and the playwright (Neil Simon) gave me a lot to work with -- lots of emotion, reaction with a healthy dose of snideness. The character was complex, evoking sympathy from the audience and annoyance from her husband in equal doses.

But a role doesn't have to be big for a character to have a backstory. One of my castmates played a bellhop, a waiter and a groom on his wedding day and no two of those characters looked alike. His time on stage amounted to less than fifteen minutes, but he was in character (a different one each time) every moment. Not only is that fun for the audience but, as an actor, it's fun to play off of as well.

Many actors have pre-performance rituals, and I definitely had mine for this show. One of them was standing backstage before my entrance, thinking of adjectives to describe my character (something I also do when creating a new character for a story I'm writing). I came up with quite a few, but the perfect one remained on the tip of my tongue, eluding me throughout the entire run of the show. It eludes me still, but its essence was crystal clear; even though I couldn't articulate the word I wanted, I could channel the feelings it created into my performance.

Putting a character on the page is a similar experience. Much of what goes into the creation of each person in a story is never articulated on the page. Readers want to live in the present with the characters. Though feelings and backstory inform each character's every action, readers should see their influence, not read the characters' whys and wherefores, especially since the former is much more fascinating than the latter.

My hiatus from the stage was nearly two decades long, and I hope my next break will be much shorter. In the meantime, I'll continue to create characters for my books. Though they'll live in my readers' heads instead of on the stage, I'll have just as much fun of bringing them to life.