Mini Research Presentation: Effect on Me as an Actor

Learning about Victorian Melodrama impacted the way I thought about acting, my past performances, and the shows and movies I have watched.

While making this presentation I thought a lot about the show we did last year, Peter and The Starcatcher. The more I researched the stock characters, the more I realized that most of the characters in our play were dramatized versions of typical victorian melodrama stock characters. In my opinion Molly and Peter switched the typical roles they would have been given in Victorian Melodrama. I think Peter took on more of the heroine character, as he was living a terrible life and just wanted freedom and love and Molly, being the hero, wanted to save him from his past life. Like a heroine would, Peter finds true happiness at the end of the play. Black Stache models a lot of the villain traits and Smee a lot of the Villain's accomplice traits. Black Stache only cared about himself and showed no positive traits of kindness or love, both of which are traits of a typical villain stock character. Smee was always ready to help Black Stache and would do whatever he wished, although often messing up and providing a bit of comic relief; fulfilling the traits of a villain’s accomplice.

This presentation also allowed me to see how stock characters can be used in modern media, such as movies and television. While the characters here are usually not as simplistic as Victorian Melodrama stock characters are, they still contain some of the same traits and provide a baseline for the character to start at. One example of this would be Joey in Friends, as he models the clown character. Joey is a much more complex character than this stock character, but he does contain some of the elements of a clown stock character. He is always messing up, not always the smartest, and provides a lot of comic relief. Another example would be Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl. He contains many traits of the villain, but again is much more complex than the stock character. I think this interested me as much as it did because of how versatile the characters are. The stock character personality can evolve into a deep and complex character, the stock character can be used as a starting point to evolve the character.

This impacts my future acting because I can use the basis of a stock character for whoever I am playing to help kickstart my character’s intentions and motives. This allows me a basis to start to understand and build my character.