Since starting to write my script I have for obvious reasons begun to
think a lot about characters. I've also been keeping my branding
workshop experience in mind, and all the things I read about branding
and typing actors when I was organising the workshop. I've also thought
and written a lot about characters in stories and films written for
women and girls or the lack of them in both quantity and quality.
Sitting down now and writing characters myself, I find myself thinking
really hard about getting them out of their respective type-boxes.
I'm writing an adventure film. I writing about young people. I have a
set of five main characters, with a female lead. I have some idea of who
they are and where they're going. And every time I write about or for
one of my characters I find myself asking them, 'Am I doing you justice?
Am I putting you in a box or dragging you out of one?'
The reason behind these questions is simple. I am
sick of typing. I am sick of putting people in boxes. I am sick of
watching types, packaged neatly into tight little boxes, instead of real
fully developed characters, particularly in those parts written for
women and girls.
It's the same with being an actress. I am still struggling with
understanding what exactly my type is. Maybe I am rejecting the idea of
really truly understanding it because I wish for myself and for every
other actor out there that it wasn't necessary or at least not as
necessary to type anyone at all. I yearn for a world where writers and
those turning the written word into a visual product were more
interested in what their characters abilities, flaws, journeys, and
experiences were than to find some physical measurements of what they
think these abilities, flaws, journeys, and experiences require a
character to look like.
Seriously, fuck typing - at least when I am writing. Because
unfortunately, as an actress I depend on capitalising on my type,
whatever that means concretely.
But when I am writing, I have the power to completely disregard what
physical types my characters are or I can describe their physical
appearance as a complete juxtaposition to what their character essence
is. I can totally say, 'Fuck typing!'
I may still end up with a completely conventional adventure story, with
completely conventional characters. But that will be due to
inexperience, not lack of trying. And while I am writing my characters
as much out of the box as I can manage, I am for the first time in a
long time in this crazy industry built on boxes and vanity, experiencing
real creative freedom!
So, while I'm writing, I'm gonna be asking the universe real politely to
send the same experience my way in my actress life. Now, that would
make for a swell 2012!
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