Characterisation

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Characterisation is the way in which a writer, or possibly an actor, conveys his or her characters through dialogue, physicality and description.

[edit] Characterisation in Drama

In performance an actor has less time to characterise and so can risk the character coming across as underdeveloped. The great realists of dramaturgy have relied heavily on implicit characterisation which occupy the main body of their character driven plays. Examples of these playwrights are Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and Anton Chekhov. Such psychological epics as The Seagull indirectly characterise the protagonists so that the audience is drawn into their inner turmoils as they are slowly revealed over the 3 hours of time spent with the characters. The actors taking on these roles must also characterise over a long period of time, to the point that there seems to be no direct statement of who the character is at any point, this realism in acting requires the actor to characterise from their own persona as a starting point. The audience therefore does not recognize a realistic characterisation immediately.

However the playwright and actor also have the choice of direct characterisation in a similar vein to the writer in literature. The presentation of a character for a sociological discussion only has to be as real as the discussion requires. In this way a character can be used as an iconic reference by a playwright to suggest location, an epoch in history, or even draw in a political debate. The inclusion of a stock character, or in literary terms an archetypal character, by a playwright can risk drawing overly simplistic pictures of people and smack of stereotyping however the degree of success in direct characterisation in order to swiftly get to the action varies from play to play and often according to the use the character is put to. In explicitly characterizing a certain character the actor makes a similar gamble. Like in Vegas. The choice of what aspects of a character are demonstrated by the actor to directly characterise is a political choice and makes a statement as to the ethics and agenda of the actor and the play as a whole. Examples of direct characterisation are found in mime especially, and in Epic theater, yet also in the work of Steven Berkoff, The Wooster Group, and Complicite.

Both implicit and explicit characterisation in drama can result in a problematic, politically unstable character, even a stereotype. And conversely both direct and indirect characterisation can make complex and unique characters depending on the choices made by those doing the characterizing.