The Guardian: Character Dives

With one of our actors missing for a week, Nate and I focused on character studies for the rehearsals for the past few weeks. I've been happy with what both Keanu and Chloe have come up with for their respective characters. I have had my own thoughts about the characters and their backgrounds, but letting the actors come up with their own thoughts and ideas and then further apply them to the way they play the characters has been a unique thing to see.

As a writer, I've primarily only been the only person to example my characters and come up with ideas and personalities and backgrounds for them. Sometimes I've gotten insight from other people, but for the most part, they've just been my own characters. But this is the first time that the characters aren't just mine; Ren is just as much my character as she is now Chloe's, and the same goes for Keanu's relationship with Beschut. They're both also Nate's characters too.

Neither character has changed much from my initial thoughts about how I've envisioned them, but the nuances have definitely taken a life of their own. I'm very excited to have the practices Sunday to see Chloe and Keanu act together since that first rehearsal. I feel like we're going to make a lot of progress. I'm also excited to work with Adam and Josh next week for the voice over work. We haven't had much work with them, but I'm curious to see what they've come up with and how that session will go.

Jones has been a character I've been very fond of and had the clearest vision for what I want them to sound like at particular beats in the script. It makes me nervous about my own expectations since we won't be having much time to work with the voice actors with how we've planned the schedules. The issue isn't actually a problem, it's just my on expectations I need to be aware of. I also need to be prepared to communicate with Nate about what I envisioned for moments. He has been great in regards to looking to me for input and insight into portions of the script, and I hope that remains the same with the voice over work. While we're putting a fraction of the rehearsal time into this part of the play, in my opinion, this will be one of the most important parts of it, and I want to make sure we get it right.

I'm also curious to see how Adam's American accent will be. I know Nate really wanted Adam to do it, and I've only heard it once back during the initial read-through, so I will be curious to see how it works with the script. I'm hoping Adam trying to do the accent doesn't muddle up the emotional core of some of the script.