A Day in the Life

This exercise allowed me to discover that my character would spend practically all of his time working with the other convicts or reading and trying to gain knowledge.  I wanted my character to be timid, but also a bit of a show off in terms of his knowledge, I found through this exercise that he is quite stubborn, the exercise also informed me of my relationship with other characters, I found that my character stayed fairly close to Mary Brenham and was very polite to her, but kept his distance from Major Robbie Ross, and when in his region I kept my head down and made no eye contact which illustrated the true extent of my characters fear.  I found this exercise as a whole very useful as it begun to show me where I could position myself on stage and also gave me further knowledge into character relationships, which will allow me to show these in a physical manner through my characters lines in the text.  

Johnson's Dictionary

Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English Language' is one of the most famous dictionaries in history. First published in 1755, the dictionary took just over eight years to compile, required six helpers, and listed 40,000 words. Each word was defined in detail, the definitions illustrated with quotations covering every branch of learning. It was a massive literary achievement, a more extensive and complex dictionary than any of it's predecessors.

I felt understanding more about where Wisehammers profound love for words stemmed from would prove to help my character development, as I could study what he studied and hopefully begin to think down the same lines as him.  I thought if I could begin to think like my character then I would be able to adopt his physicality’s very easily.

Michael Chekhov

I was still struggling to understand my character and adopt his physicalities, so I begun to use exercises created my theatre practitioners, to try and gain more understanding.

Michael Chekhov

(Background of Chekhov)

-Nephew of Anton Chekhov

-Born 28 years after Stanislavky

-Naturalism

-He got caught up in Russian revolution

-Stalin didn't like him, so he had to emigrate to Europe, then ended up in America.

-He emphasises imagination and movement

-His dominant themes were atmosphere, actors creativity and the physicalisation of an inner experience

He diffred from Stanislavsky on a key point: Stanislavsky said you have to use yourself (memory) however Michael Chekhov said you can imagine, I felt that for this role imagination would be key.

Me (Jonah)- I'm quite a horizontal person I am always looking about to see what is going on, I try to take in new information when im in large groups of people.

Character - I think Wisehammer is also quite horizontal, he moves around wanting to take in as much information as possible, so he would also be looking around a lot, and have a certain sharpness to him because he is timid and isn't very confident for a majority of the play.

What is the point of my character?

He is Jewish and in this era it means he is struggling against the Catholics (the dominant religion in the play), he is used to represent the minorities, he is used to compete for Mary Brenham's love (love triangle), and to introduce some intellectualism to the play.

How did this help?

It added to my understanding of the character movements, it also allowed me to understand his journey in confidence throughout the play, at first he is scared, but he begins to open up to other convicts and this allows him to place trust in others.  It gave me the idea to allow his posture to grow with his confidence throughout the course of the play.  Which I feel breathed life into my character for the first time in the rehearsal process.

Who? Where? What?

My character is named John Wisehammer.  I feel that simply the words used to create his name inform people of his personality. ‘Wise’ obviously reflecting that he is an intellectual, and ‘hammer’ possibly showing his stubborn side, and how he will always try and prove his point.  He is a Jewish man, born and raised in England, he is interested in words and loves to learn.

The real John Wisehammer was transported from Gloucester to Australia for theft on the 13th May, 1787 for 7 years, he arrived in New South Wales on the 21st January, 1788.

Transportation over to Australia was a common punishment for convicts of the time, to serve their sentence outside of the British Isles.  In the play John Wisehammer is in a prison camp in Australia with many other convicts, different sources say different settings, one saying that the prison camp is in New South Wales in the east of Australia, and another claiming it is set in Sydney. 

He is in this camp for the false accusation that he stole snuff from a shop (Rickett and Loads).  He wants to prove my innocence to the other convicts, the guards and also the owners of the shop that accused him of theft.  I also feel he wants the love and affection of Mary Brenham, although he must compete with Lieutenant Ralph to get it.

Initial Ideas

At first I wasn't sure of the plays plot and the ideas conveyed in the play.  This was probably because I hadn’t done much research into the vocabulary of the era.

I have previous experience of working on Our Country’s Good when I was working with Out of Joint Theatre Company.  Not only was I allowed to watch the play but I was allowed to watch Max Stafford-Clarke direct a rehearsed reading of ‘The Recruiting Officer’ with the cast of Our Country’s Good at the St. James Theatre, this was useful as it extended my knowledge of both plays and allowed me to speak to someone else playing my role to gain a greater knowledge from him, he taught me some exercises that he thought would be useful for developing Wisehammers character, this included widening my vocabulary, he also told me that Wisehammer’s physicality was just as important as his interesting vocal choices, he told me to find a small, compact space that I could use to create the appropriate physicality for Wisehammer. 

Today I found the cast to work together brilliantly and I feel that even in the first reading there were beautiful moments in the speech.  This gives me hope for the rehearsal process as I feel the cast will create an interesting and wonderful piece of theatre.

I have the role of John Wisehammer who is transported to Australia for stealing snuff, throughout the play he claims his innocence. He is Jewish and very intelligent.  He reveals his intelligents is self-taught and he knows a lot about words because while clearing out houses by the Thames his father once found a dictionary, of which he read this dictionary went from letters A-L.  I feel the character of John Wisehammer will be a challenging character to portray successfully as his intellectualism and intelligence give a certain grace to his character.  I feel his on-stage relationships with other characters will be a major part of creating this character, due to his beliefs but also his innocence his character relationships differ vastly between other characters in the play

I believe that Wisehammer uses some of the most beautiful dialogue in the play, and his fluency as well as his understanding of the English language is something that will require a lot of research, I feel to fully understand this characters attributes and traits I will need to study the play in more depth, but also study the Jewish beliefs as to gain a greater understanding of his character choices.