Questions
1. What is the purpose of my character in this play?
2. In which scenes does the playwright include me? why?
3. What single-word adjectives best describe me? Why?
4. How would I describe my relationship with each character in this show? How do my interactions change and develop over the course of the play?
5. How would I describe my character's journey through the course of the play?
6. What are the most significant lines? Why do I believe these to be the most important?
7. If, by definition, drama means "doing", then what are my most significant actions, behaviors, and bits of business in the play?
8. If drama is also defined as relationships in conflict, how is my character dramatic?
9. What are the objectives of my character? What obstacles stand in the way? What motivates my character? What tactics does my character employ to get what he/she wants?
10. What is my character's most climactic moment in the pay? What incidents lead significantly to this moment?
11. What physical and vocal characteristics and/or idiosyncrasies might be appropriate to help delineate my character?
12. What is the play about? How does my character relate to the themes and ideas of this play?
13. Your own questions?
Answers
1. My character is Yazmine. My opinion of the purpose of her character is of support. Although she comes out in many scenes with the main role, I don't really see her as a main role. I see her as a help for the main role. She is there to always support him and help him understand her mother and try to see through a positive outlook, even though she is going through her own problems.
2. In the first scene with her cousin - SCENE 1
SCENE 3 - teaching and hearing about Aunt Ginny
SCENE 5 - the flowershop scene with Elliot
SCENE 7 - meeting Odessa at the restaurant with her cousin.
SCENE 8 - she meets the people in the website
SCENE 10 - Mami Ginny's funeral
SCENE 12 - introducing FREEDOM&NOISE
SCENE 14 - FREEDOM&NOISE
SCENE 15 - throwing her aunts ashes
3. Helpful. Supportive. Passionate. Compassionate. Hopeful. Hurt. Protective. Independent.
4. Yazmine's character is pretty consistent throughout the play. She is always a support, almost never starting her own scenes first, but helping others that take the initiative, but you know she is independent because of her choice in life. But as the play goes on, she gets courage and starts to make the initiative. She takes over the website for her aunt that she had been bitter against. She learns to forgive and desires to make the first initiative to help others instead of just being a support.
5. The journey of Yazmine's life is very inspirational in a way. She moves from an uneducated family to be the first one to get a degree, a white-collar job, and a family, but at the beginning of the play she is feeling like a failure as she is getting a divorced. She seems to really love her cousin and sees him as a favorite loving brother. You do not see her interact with others and she seems to again be a crutch. And she became more of a courageous leader that is outgoing.
6. As Yaz is often found replying rather than initiating a conversation, I could not find a single line that I felt was the most significant. I thought the monologue that starts as "FREEDOM&NOISE: Hello, I am Freedom&Noise, your interim site manager, currently logging on from the site manager...... I am not a user...." I really love this line from her because it is the first time that instead of just worrying, she is making a stand and choosing to put herself out there to help others.
7. I felt that the most important actions, behaviors, and bits of business of my character from this play are when Yaz firstly goes out to buy the flowers with her cousin, Elliot, Yaz sees the "ghost" of her aunt, Odessa, Yaz takes over the website, and when Yaz throws the ashes with her cousin.
8. I wouldn't be okay with describing my character as particularly dramatic. You only see her interact with her cousin and her students in the first half of the play. During those scenes, she isn't really in conflict, but I feel that Elliot and her students connect in that she is almost trying so hard to inspire them both. The second half is when you see the way that she treats Odessa and she seems to have some kind of bitter grudge for what she has done in the past and what she has done to Elliot, but the character overall does not have many conflicts with FOUNTAINHEAD, ORANGATAN, or CHUTESANDLADDERS.
9. The objectives of Yaz are to really inspire her cousin and get him going in the right direction with his life. She finds it difficult as she feels that she can not really do or say anything to help him even if she really wants to, so she just tries to "be there" for him. I think a great motivation for Yaz is the fact that she pushes herself. She wants to be the one that everyone can rely on, sometimes without even knowing. She is the first, after all, to graduate, go to college, get a degree, get a job, and marry and have children. I think she wants to almost lead by example with her life, but she realizes that she's not really that happy. She doesn't really seem to try to get it her way in many situations, but she does try to put on some attitude with her cousin and also shows a strong grudge against her aunt.
10. I think the most climactic moment of the play is when she and Elliot bashes into her aunt's apartment where they find her lying down and passed out. I thought the scene where she holds her and almost envisions a beautiful ghost of her aunt is very powerful and moving, because that is when she just lets everything go, that's when she learns to forgive the past and can move on. Which is why I believe it led her to manage the website the next scene she comes on.
11. I think learning to be still as I know I pace a lot. I feel that she would not really be pacing back and forth. She would be steady as she is independent and has a lot of people relying on her, also as a professor. For the accent, I learned that when teaching, she should really go out of her way to pronunciate, but when she is comfortably at home, her accent and culture kind of comes out more. But still throughout the play I would imagine a passionate headstrong woman.
12. As discussed many times, I think the play has a different meaning to each person. To me, the play is about restarting. Its about family and how sometimes family is always blood related. It is also about breaking barriers and overcoming obstacles (sometimes with the help from the ones you love and sometimes alone and independently). Yaz's character portrays these themes as although many people see as already independent, she still had barriers and insecurities and hurt that was lying under her "perfect" outside. By the end of the play, you can really tell that her barriers come down one by one.
13. I would like to know how I, as an actor, can better portray her? (her emotions, feelings, facial expressions) I also want to learn how to be more adult-like as I find myself constantly acting like a teenager. I also would like to know the real story behind the ghost if I could ask the director herself? and Why it is so significant (I realize it is a person Elliot kills, but it doesn't really offer anything else). Why did the ghost randomly go away? What the play is based off of? Did the director originally want so much symbolism, or did they form without knowing or unintentionally?
