BUILDING CHARACTER WITH IMAGINARY BODIES & DIALECTS: LANA SUGARMAN

As we continue in this process, I’ve been struck by the tools that almost instantly bring me into the world of the play or the characters I’m playing. The first doorway in has been imaginary body. Earlier this year Craig guided us through this exercise where we are asked to envision our character’s form and build their body out of imaginary clay. We are encouraged to let this form surprise us as it’s being created. Once built we study the details and then step ‘in’ to this imaginary body and see what sensations arise, eventually talking this body on a journey through the space. We have now done this with multiple characters, but my original body was that of Reverend Johnson. The Reverend only appears onstage in one scene, and I had been struggling with who he was and his place in the colony. To my surprise, the Reverend became quite a large man. The word that kept coming up was ‘swollen’. He takes up space and his breathing is laboured and shallow. I find whenever I need to access him I can ‘step in’ and there he is in all his puffed-up glory. 

While Mary also has a distinct physical form, more recently in the process I’ve been leaning into her dialect with our wonderful coach Chuck Richie. Mary is one of the few convicts who can read and had an education until the age of 10. Because of this, she can dance a bit between a Cockney and an RP dialect. As she realizes that her reading skills are an asset, we hear her speak in a more formal or ‘proper’ fashion to gain the attention and favour of Ralph and distinguish herself from Dabby. It has been years since I’ve explored dialect work in a full production and having the option to choose which voice Mary releases in different moments has been a delightful exploration of vocal polarity. 

While I often use my imagination to flesh out the Given Circumstances of a play, I am continually excited by the image-based nature of the Michael Chekhov technique. I can now picture both of my characters in my mind’s eye- our similarities and differences - and can feel what it’s like to embody them. (My imagination revealed the charming detail that Mary has a gap between her two front teeth and the Reverend is very sweaty and uncomfortable in the island’s climate.) These specific elements add a richness to these characters for me.

Here's to uniting the body, voice, and mind as we move forward with brave storytelling!