Imagine that you are a theatrical director and that you are preparing for a professional performance of a play. One of the actors is concerned that he will not be able to create a credible character in this difficult to set play - Advise.

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Imagine that you are a theatrical director and that you are preparing for a professional performance of a play. One of the actors is concerned that he will not be able to create a credible character in this difficult to set play. Advise the actor as to how you want the role to be approached. Talk him through the play, explaining how he should develop relationships with other characters within the play and how difficult sections of the play should be managed. (You must quote from the play to illustrate the points that you make.)

     I have chosen you after auditioning many others to play the part of Donald Pearce in the short play Between Mouthfuls within the series of plays called Confusions by Alan Ayckbourn. You have come to me, as you appear to be concerned as to whether or not you will be able to create a credible character. As your director I am here to advise on how I want the role to be approached, I will also explain to you how you should develop your relationships with other characters within the play and how difficult sections of the play should be managed.

     I would like to establish exactly why you feel you are having problems. I have directed this play a number of times and many of my actors have come to me expressing difficulties and doubts. Some of the problems they found themselves experiencing were simply that they found it difficult to deal with the serious issues of separation, obsession and isolation. Some of them had been having similar problems in their own families and found it undermining to laugh at such circumstances. Others simply didn’t feel they could really get into character in such a short play in such a short space of time and they found it challenging to act with such small group of actors. To get to the bottom of your problem I think we first need to make sure you understand a little about Alan Ayckbourn himself, his style of writing and the nature of his plays.  

     Alan Ayckbourn is one of the most prolific writers for the English stage, having written and produced, on average, one full-length play or comedy every year since 1965. He started his theatrical career as an actor and stage manager with Donald Wolfit’s company but he later moved to Stephen Joseph’s Studio Theatre Company in the early 1960’s, where he began directing and writing. Many of his most successful plays began at Scarborough where he is Artistic Director of the Library Theatre. His plays have their roots in the tradition of farce rather than in experimental theatre. He has stretched the boundaries of comedy and farce as his work has developed. Increasingly, the comings and goings of married couples are injected into his plays with a note of black comedy and social groups are fraught with the suggestions of the darker arenas of human interchange. In his own words:

        “I brought light and darkness face to face on stage, clear cut and identifiable.”

 Ayckbourn’s success may be accounted for in that his work is challenging, but within strict limits; his subject matter has tended to be of middle-class values and of lifestyles under threat, which form plays with theatrical convention but is always firmly rooted in the familiar structures of farce and West End comedy. He often writes about the middle classes in order to explore the more serious issues of modern life.

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     In my opinion it is not just enough to know the authors background and his motivation but it is also necessary to discover the nature of the play and the character you are playing. Between Mouthfuls is one of a series of five interlinked one-act plays called Confusions, which are typical of his interactive comedies of human behaviour. Usually in his plays Ayckbourn takes an apparently normal or ordinary situation and setting and proceeds to play with it both in order to entertain and to draw his audiences attention to what concerns him most, and his concerns can ...

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