Creating Compelling Characters For Immersive Environments
The Character And The Guest
It’s hard to allow yourself to open your heart to strangers. You think about being dressed as a comic book hero or an animated character or a dinosaur or a robot. It feels goofy to be serious about any of this. It feels better to wink and nod and make jokes about the whole situation.…
Aim For The Heart
Hellen Keller said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” Each guest’s heart is the target for the outstanding interactive performer. It isn’t as difficult as it may seem. But, you can’t be superficial. You can’t rely on performance tricks…
Shakespeare For Today’s Actor
I’ve been working a lot with Shakespeare lately. Teaching, performing and writing about his plays. I realize now how much this training and performance experience adds to work with contemporary scripts and in working as an interactive character. Doing Shakespeare well means the actor is portraying a bigger than life character with unshakable commitment, believability…
More Behaviors and What They Suggest
The definition of ‘interactive’ is a two-way flow of information, allowing people to influence or have an effect on each other. It’s commonly accepted that, as humans exchange information with each other, only 7% is done with words. Another 38% is in vocal tone. And the greatest factor in human communication (55%) is body language.…
Seeing Into Someone’s Heart – Non-Verbal Cues
Without thinking about it, everyone does it. People broadcast their level of attention, interest and comfort in non-verbal messages. It’s a peek at what is going on in someone’s heart. To put it into our terms, these messages are the very first offer you get from your scene partner. As you work, it is critical…
Gotta’ Walk the Walk
I’ve been away for a bit. I’m creating a character – using the same tools I talk about in this blog. Walkin’ the walk… Macbeth is the character. The show is an original comedy written by Lloyd Schwartz called Classic Couples Counseling. Lady M and I are one of the five sets of characters from…
Eliminate Reasons To Hold Back
Here’s a quick thought about what we do and the creative process. Sure, in our work we have to “color inside the lines”. That’s part of the whole process. We are part of teams that help us prepare performances and evaluate what happens in rehearsals. The final product belongs to many contributors. Still, I run…
Pivot… Spin… Adapt
In your work as an interactive character, the Yes part of “Yes, and…” means accepting what the guest sends your way. The And is your response. Now, you could And them from a menu of lines or bits you know usually work. Imagine, instead, using their offer to make the connection more real. What if…
“Yes, and…”
The Goal – Each guest becomes a unique, contributing partner in the word of our story. Every time a guest interacts with a character, their feeling of being a valued part of this new world grows deeper and fuller. They go on to explore their new environment, inspired, confident and emotionally connected to this imaginary…
It’s Personal
The kind of connection we want between a character and a guest is a personal give and take. A two-way interaction. In the example in last blog entry, we got where the guest makes an emotional connection with the dinosaur. That’s one half of our interaction. Imagine, now, the character incorporates the natural human cues…
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Interactive Characters 