A Baby in a Business Suit

Ah, yes. More children's theatre!

A big recurring thought in my head this week was the thought of "acting your age". Our director for the musical keeps stressing how she doesn't want our show to be a great version of an adult play done by high schoolers. She want the audience to believe we are those characters, and that age. To get lost in the show so much they dont think, "Oh that girls isn't 23... shes 15." 

I think that one of the reasons Stone Girls Dreaming evoked such strong feeling from the audience was because we didn't have to stretch that age gap. We were acting our ages. just different people. While the maturity level of say Rebekah or Aysha were probably a lot higher than ours given their situation and experiences, they would act and react often in a way any other teenager would. Aysha and Ahmed's flirtations, for example could be transplanted into many other settings, and the outcome would have been the same. 

After seeing Alice in Wonderland, I thought once more about children playing adult characters. In Jungle Book, The script entirely sidesteps this problem by having two human children, and then defaulting the rest of the little munchkins to one animal species or another. But in Alice, however, there are many characters who have mature characteristics, and then casting begins to be difficult. Do you cast bigger children? Louder children? Boys with deeper voices? 

Throughout the first part of the show, I was fearful. Many of the characters intended to be older seemed like little kids in their mothers dress up clothes. Their characterization wasn't strong enough to persuade me otehrwise. Towards the middle however, I became hopeful. An excellent choice on the directors behalf was ot make many of the "older" figures so ridiculous that one did not even question the age. For example, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, with their silly voices and large gestures, made the pair of them so inane and fun that one did not care that these were middle schoolers.

The biggest achievement for me, was the Queen of Hearts. This young sixth grader was cast and not only an adult, but a fearsome one, one who commands an audience, which proved to be an additional challenge considering the actress in question may very well have been one of the smallest cast members. Through a commanding voice and piercing scream, as well as owning her body movements as if she were as large as a pro wrestler, she had every audience members eyes on her when she spoke, and even when she didn't. I found her performance riveting, and even better than many had with size on their side when playing a mature role.

I feel that I can apply what I observed yesterday in my own performance, particularly in Fiddler on the Roof, where I play an older housewife who has been married for 25 years. I am obviously not the closest match in reality, but I can embody this character totally, through movement and voice. With our recent mask work, we have been doing a lot of work with completely leaving what we are at the door, and being totally neutral, using our bodies as tools and not as restrictions. I feel that this is the key to mastering adult characters as kids. Starting from scratch, and eliminate all we know as being teenagers, and just try to imbue what we think adults would act like. That's the part that requires research, and I think that by incorporating that and eliminating childhood ways, no one has to act their age ;)