Character Profile

Welcome to Part 5 of Theatrefolk’s Superhero Series. Your students have accomplished a lot: They created their own original superheroes, super sidekicks, and supervillains, and have experimented by bringing their super worlds together, through exploring writing, design, and improv activities. Now, it’s time to bring these characters to life with a final performance! The following assignment puts what students have learned throughout the character creation and exploration process to practical use. There is a free rubric at the bottom of this page for evaluation purposes. Final Performance AssignmentStudents will complete the following: • Write a one-minute monologue as one of their original characters (superhero, sidekick, or villain — student’s choice). • Memorize and perform the monologue using appropriate facial expressions, gestures, and vocal inflections. If students are in-class, the performance will be live. If students are learning remotely, the teacher will decide whether students will perform live or record themselves and submit the video. • Create a costume for their character using items from home. (This doesn’t have to be complicated — it can be as simple as choosing a particular colour scheme for the character’s clothing, making a cape out of a towel or blanket, or creating a logo out of paper and taping it to their shirt.) • Find or create one prop or set piece for their character using items from home. (Alternatively, students might wish to use a virtual background if they are performing online.) • Choose a theme song for their character, to be used somewhere within the performance (student’s choice). • After the performance, students will complete and submit a one-page reflection, answering the following questions: • Give a brief (two- to three-sentence) description of your character. • Describe your design choices and the reasoning behind them (costume, prop/set piece, song). • What was the easiest part of this assignment? The most difficult? • What have you learned throughout this character creation process? Final Assignment (Alternative)If you have students who are reluctant to perform, or if you are teaching remotely and your school does not require or allow students to turn on their cameras, you may wish for students to complete the following alternative final project. Students will complete and submit the following: • A one-minute written monologue for one of their original characters (superhero, sidekick, or villain — student’s choice). • A one-paragraph write-up of whom they would cast to play that character in a live performance, and why this person would be suitable to perform the role. This could be a professional performer, a friend or family member, a teacher, etc. • A mood board or collection of sketches for the following items: • The character’s costume • The character’s home base — lair, hideout, headquarters, etc. • A tool or prop that is important to the character • The character’s theme song • A one-page reflection, answering the following questions: • Give a brief (two- to three-sentence) description of your character. • Describe your design choices and the reasoning behind them (costume, set, prop, song). • What was the easiest part of this assignment? The most difficult? • What have you learned throughout this character creation process? We hope you’ve enjoyed the Superhero Series! If you have any ideas or requests for future series articles, let us know!

Welcome to Part 4 of Theatrefolk’s Superhero Series. So far, your students have created their own original superheroes, super sidekicks, and supervillains. Now, we need to get those characters into some action! There are many fun exercises that your students can do with these characters. Take any of the following suggestions and mix and match them to suit the needs of your class. The goal of these exercises is not to create a finished performance yet; rather, it is to help students create a deeper understanding of the characters they created and help them shape their characters into more defined, well-rounded, interesting personalities. Writing Monologues• Write a monologue for the superhero for one of the following situations: • Putting clues together to figure out who the villain is • Interrogating a criminal who refuses to answer • Giving a speech to the public after making a daring rescue • Explaining to their sidekick how they assumed their superhero persona (backstory) • Write a monologue for the sidekick for one of the following situations: • Convincing the superhero to take them on as a sidekick • Convincing the superhero to let them help when the superhero doesn’t want them to • Apologizing to the superhero for having to bail them out of a sticky situation • Defending the superhero to a bystander (news reporter/police officer/angry mob) • Write a monologue for the villain for one of the following situations: • Explaining their dastardly crimes to an incapacitated superhero • Giving a public speech — either as themselves or in their public identity. Are they trying to fool the audience into believing them, or threatening the public and creating fear? • Recounting some of their best evil deeds to a minion or captive • Admonishing a minion for messing up Writing Scenes• Write a one-page, two-person scene between two of the characters. How does the scene change depending on who is in the scene? (Hero and villain, hero and sidekick, or sidekick and villain?) Here are some prompts to try: • Hero meeting the sidekick for the first time • Hero being bested by the villain and the villain getting away • Villain capturing the sidekick to use them as bait • Hero and sidekick creating a plan to capture the villain • Hero and sidekick disagreeing on what to do • Villain taunting the hero while the hero is stuck in a trap • Change the tone of the scene the student wrote. For example, try writing the scene as a comedy, an action sequence, a dark and gritty drama, or a horror scene. (Try showing clips of different Batman series as examples — compare and contrast the 1960s television series starring Adam West to the 1989 Batman film starring Michael Keaton and The Dark Knight series starring Christian Bale.) • Write a scene featuring all three characters. Have other students read the scene aloud to see how it sounds. Do the characters each have unique, interesting voices, or do they all sound the same? Have students look at the “voice” of the written lines, rather than the performances of the other students. Challenge them to differentiate their writing tone. Design (can be for one or all of the characters)• Costumes: Create a logo or symbol for the character (like the Superman “S” or Captain America’s star). • Costumes: Sketch and colour a costume for the character. Include notes such as a description of material/fabric requirements (e.g., flame-retardant, waterproof, etc.) and reasons for choice of colour scheme. • Props: Design a special tool or weapon for the character (such as Batman’s utility belt or Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth). • Set: Make a sketch of the superhero’s headquarters or the villain’s lair. Include details such as location, equipment, special features, and choice of furnishings. • Sound: Choose a song that could be used as the character’s theme music. The James Bond movies are great examples of this; each movie features a unique song and musician but they all have a common theme and chord progression. Describe why that song (lyrics, tone, instrumentation, vocal quality, etc.) works well for the character. (If you have some musically inclined students, they may want to compose their own theme song for their character.) Improv• Have a student select one of their characters and answer questions from the rest of the class in character. • Have two students each select one of their characters and have a conversation. How does the conversation differ depending on the combination of characters? (Two heroes, two sidekicks, two villains, a hero and a villain, a hero and a sidekick, or a sidekick and a villain?) • Divide students into groups of four to five. Have all the students select one of their characters (all the same — all heroes, all villains, or all sidekicks) and improvise a scene in which they must come together for some reason (such as a group of heroes assembling to work together, like the Avengers). These exercises will help your students explore and learn more about their characters while practicing many different theatrical skills. You can combine some of the exercises to create a longer project if you wish. Keep an eye out for our fifth and final installment of the Superhero Series: Final Performance.

Welcome to Part 3 of Theatrefolk’s Superhero Series! In our last posts we’ve created original superheroes and super sidekicks. Now it’s time to create some conflict and add a dash of mayhem with some supervillains! Villains commit horrible crimes, perform heinous acts, and push our heroes to the edge. But with no conflict, heroes are boring — that’s why villains are so important. They become a vital part of the superhero’s existence. They often become icons in their own right — nobody forgets incredible characters like The Joker, Darth Vader, Lex Luthor, and Catwoman. Villains are also lots of fun to play onstage — they usually get great catchphrases, cool costumes, and possess a wicked evil laugh. With villains, there are two important points to remember: 1. Villains need a clear WHY. What is their driving force, their purpose, their raison d’être? What motivates them to commit horrible deeds? Is it revenge? Insanity? Jealousy? Money? Desire for power? Fear? Anger? Once you know what your villain’s driving force is, then you can figure out how far they’ll go to achieve their goals. The higher the stakes, the more intriguing and exciting the stories are. 2. In the villain’s mind, they are the hero of the story. Villains are absolutely convinced of their purpose, and will go to any means necessary to get what they want — lying, cheating, stealing, causing destruction and even death — and they are right to do so. They may have their own rules, guidelines, or philosophies that guide their actions, but they are truly the heroes in their own minds. For example, in the movie Avengers: Infinity War, the villain Thanos believes he will free the world from suffering due to overpopulation and lack of resources, by using the Infinity Gauntlet to snap his fingers and turn half the world’s population to dust. Yes, half the world’s population will be gone (randomly too — nobody knows who will be turned to dust) but the remaining survivors will have more than enough resources to prosper. With that, start your supervillain lesson with a class brainstorm and discussion: • List as many villains from movies, tv, and books as you can think of. • What drives the villains to do what they do? • What personality traits do villains possess? • Are all villains truly bad? Do they have any good aspects? Could they show (or have they ever shown) redeeming qualities? Why or why not? • What makes villains such great characters? What makes them appealing? • If you were in a play, would you rather play a hero or a villain? Why? • What does the phrase, “In the villain’s mind, they are the hero of the story” mean? Describe it in your own words. Have students use the Villain Character Profile Worksheet (found below) to create their own original supervillain. One of the challenges of creating a “bad” character is creating the character without judgement. You may not agree with their mission, but remember that in the villain’s mind, their purpose is right and just. Students must find a balance to make their villain character horrible and foul while also being fully thought-out and compelling. Your students now have three original characters at their fingertips, and now it’s time to take them to the next level. Stay tuned for our next instalment of the Superhero Series: Bringing Your Super World Together.

Welcome to Part 2 of Theatrefolk’s Superhero Series! In our last post, we talked about creating an original superhero character. Now we’re going to give the superhero a sidekick. Batman has Robin, Harry Potter has Ron and Hermione, Mario has Luigi, Iron Man has War Machine. A great sidekick helps a superhero to shine brighter, but also helps to enhance the story, gives the hero a bit of humanity, and sometimes even saves the day. Here are some questions to pose to your students to get their ideas flowing about sidekicks (there are a lot of questions here; don’t feel you need to use all of them!): • What does the term “sidekick” mean? Where did it come from? Have students define the term in their own words first and then look up an “official” definition to compare. • Alternatively, have students come up with a “wrong answers only” definition of a sidekick, and present it in a comedic fashion to the rest of the class. • What is the purpose of a sidekick in a superhero story? • Make a list of famous sidekicks and their traits/abilities/powers. • This might be a bit more challenging than thinking of heroes, and students will need to think outside the box for this one. For example, Batman has Robin AND Alfred Pennyworth as sidekicks, but they play different roles in Batman’s life. • What traits should a good sidekick possess? • What traits do sidekicks have in common with their superhero? What makes them different? • If a hero has more than one sidekick, is there a hierarchy or pecking order? Is one sidekick more important than the other? Do they fill different roles in the hero’s life? Why does that particular hero have more than one sidekick? • Are there any superheroes that you can think of that don’t have a sidekick? Why do you think they don’t have one? • Many superheroes have a love interest. Are love interests also sidekicks? • Why is a character a sidekick and not the hero? Using the Super Sidekick Character Profile Worksheet below, have students create their own sidekick character for the superhero they previously created. The worksheet is similar in nature to the superhero worksheet, but has some additional questions about how and why the sidekick joined forces with the superhero, as well as how they might react if the superhero were incapacitated in some way. Would they step up and take a heroic stance, or would they need the superhero to recover and rescue them? Wow — that’s a lot to think about! It can be challenging to create a good sidekick character because they need to be compelling and fully imagined, but not take away from the hero of the story. Otherwise, the character would no longer be the sidekick; they’d be the hero. If students are finding as they write that their sidekick is more interesting than their hero, it’s certainly not bad or wrong. Have them hold onto those thoughts, because they’ll come in handy for future exercises with their superhero and sidekick characters. Next on the docket is — dun dun DUN — the bad guys! Crooks, cretins, criminals. Yes, next week we are talking villains. It’s good to be bad!

One of the most important elements when writing a play or a story is creating characters that feel three-dimensional and real. You can help your students flesh out their characters with some focused character development questions in order to create realistic and well-rounded personalities. We have 20 questions students can apply to their characters to develop their character profiles:1. What is your full name? 2. Does your name mean anything? 3. Who is in your immediate family? 4. What is your job? Do you like it? 5. Who do you get along with most? Least? 6. Who is your most important relationship? 7. Where do you live in the world? 8. Is your living environment urban, rural, or suburban? 9. How do you live? (are you neat, messy, artistic, spartan?) 10. How do you decorate your living space? 11. What is your favourite food, movie, song, colour? 12. What is your least favourite food, movie, song, colour? 13. How do you dress on a daily basis? 14. What do you choose to wear when you dress up? 15. What is your biggest pet peeve? 16. What is your biggest secret? 17. What is your favourite childhood memory? 18. What one moment from your past affects you today? 19. What do you want more than anything? 20. What is your ideal life?

Naming characters. It’s something that I take very seriously as a playwright. Some might say a little too seriously, as I spend an hour on a baby name website instead of actually, you know, writing. But I can’t help it. If the name’s not right, then the character doesn’t start talking and if the character doesn’t start talking how on earth can I write for them? I like my character names to mean something. Even if it’s just a private inside meaning for me. I like looking at the core of the character or a defined character trait and basing the name off of that. I like giving characters cultural names. I like giving names to ensemble/group characters so that the actor isn’t just playing “Number Three” they have a place. They have a home base. Names are a big part of my process, part of how I learn about the characters, how I move them through out the play. A example of this is in Sweep Under Rug. The two girls in the play have specifically chosen names from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Miranda and Ariel. This is their mother’s favourite play. Their mother, who we never meet, is not in a good state. It is suggested that she is a complete failure, a mess. It is also suggested that because she’s poor she is unable to rise about her situation, she can only learn so much. But I wanted to show (in a very subtle way, and perhaps only known to me) that indeed the mother is more than what she is assumed to be by what she named her daughters. So as I said, baby name websites are the bomb. Here’s one.And another. And a third. These have every name you could ever possibly think of. And they often tell you what the name means, a great bonus. Further to that, say you have a character of a certain nationality, you can look up the top ten names from that country. Want a French name? Here you go. If you want a character with a very popular trendy name, you can look that up too. You can look up cultural surnames. Last names are important. They can add another layer to the onion that is your character. In Floating On a Don’t Care CloudI knew I wanted the over-achieving Mya to come from a historically immigrant family and thus not have a standard North American or English name. She ended up as Mya Savakis. Creating a name that goes with theme of your play can be a way into the naming process. In Censorbleep, there are five girls who represent the idea of being clean, and pretty and perfect to the point of being robots. So all their names are all simple, they sound the same and rhyme in a robotic fashion: Mandy, Tandy, Randy, Sandy, Candy. The most fun plays to create names for are those that exist a little left to reality. You don’t need to be bound by that reality. But where do you start? I often look at the primary drive/trait of the character and either look up that word in another language (Google Translate is awesome for that). For example: let’s say I have a character who is brave and I plunk that word into Google translate to change “brave” from English to Spanish. The Spanish word for brave is Valiente which is ok, BUT, in the adjective list there is also Esforzado. When I look at that word, I see the end part “Zado” which I think is an awesome name. I like it so much I might have to come up with a character with that name. Hmmm. Another thing I might do is simply take the word in question and pick out a section in the middle of that word. InLook Me In the Eye, all of the character sames are plucked from the words that make up their core: • VIO comes from Violence • FEA comes from Fear • RUL comes from Rules • REA comes from Reality • TOR comes from History In _Beauty and the Bee _there is a chorus of 10 life-sized bees. They represent the “buzzing” in different characters’ brains. So instead of numbering the bees, they each have a name that has been fragmented from words that mean to think and things that happen in the brain: • COGI – first part of cogitate (means to think) • REVE – french word for dream • MARE – tail end of nightmare • RUMI – first part of Rumination, to ponder • BEAN – is another word for brain And then sometimes it’s as simple as finding the name that sounds the best. I want this character to have a three syllable first name and a hyphenated last name. I want this character to have a quick, blunt name. I want this character to have a funky sounding nickname. I want there to be some alliteration – the main character in Jealousy Jane was easy to come up with because there are only so many one syllable names that begin with J. And I also wanted something a little plain so that she could be jealous of her sister with the “pretty” name.