Acting skills at their best
As an actor I take great joy in the process of acting. I love not only the joy on the faces of the audience when we take them on whatever journey our story tells (from magical and uplifting to horrific and disturbing), but I also take immense pleasure in the process of creating the work in the first place. I love the exploration period, the moments of discovering that if I do this action in this way, it will bring a huge emotional response from the audience. Luckily for me that process never ends. Even when we are performing and the show is a month in, there is still space to find new ways of playing a scene, and there is still time to discover a new insight into why something is being played the way that it is.
I want to share a real moment of awe that happenned the other day not of my own creation, but of the actors I am working with. Charlie and Lola is all about puppetry, and as such the main characters are not us, but instead are the 2 dimentional objects that we have the task of breathing life into. The act of giving these objects life in this way is just wonderful, and there is a real magic when your audience watches Charlie or Lola and they see not the puppet, but just the actual characters themselves! They stop to even be aware that the characters are inannimate objects, and instead they really do just see Charlie and Lola!
The other week, our director Roman Stefanski was giving us notes on the show. He was explaining ways in which we could improve the show as well as pointing out our mistakes! That’s his job, and in this job without good critisism we would never be able to hope to achieve the levels of perfection that we are striving for. Whilst Roman was talking, Susan Harrison had the puppet of Lola on her lap, She was holding Lola by the handles as she would whilst animating her on the stage. Her focus was completely on Roman, of that there is no doubt. She was paying no attention at all on the puppet she was holding - so used to carrying Lola around why would she? Then something happenned that for me was really magical.
As Roman moved about the room, Lola followed him with her eyes. Lola (not susan) watched attentively and patiently as Roman gave his notes, even at one point subconciously adjucting her sitting position using one hand to steady herself. Whilst this was happenning, Susan I believe was completely unaware of this. So in tune with her puppet was Sue at that moment, that she animated her without even thinking about it! At that moment, I could have believed that Sue was not infact a puppetier, but that Lola as a puppet was indeed alive! Lola moved, watched and behaved as alive as anyone else in that room, and for those moments I sat in awe at the situation in which had Lola stood up and walked off with no assistance at all I would not have been any more surprised!
This level of achievement - to animate a puppet fully in the moment without conciously making any effort at all - is something that as an actor fairly new to this level of puppetiering I am completely in awe of. I can not explain how amazing it was to see Lola so alive. The bar has been set, and it is achieveable. I hope that with a little work, Charlie will be able to join Lola the day she gets up and walks off stage of her own accord without any assistance from another human!
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