A lot of ideas made to form Locaha have come from working together, aside of rehearsals, with the other girls of the ensemble. As a group we have spoken about the voice, physicality and costume of Locaha. This representation of evil should cover every aspect of what 'evil' could potentially be. We didn't want to stick a stereotypical villain or obvious depiction of a 'bad guy' in a play. Our formation is made up of 4 people: myself, Olivia Kiely, Lara and Eleanor. We've made the decision to each have our individual element or take on 'evil'.
Lara: Lara possesses the dominative voice of our group. She's purposely chosen to deepen her voice and make it very stomach deep. It works well with her physicality as she is crouching down low to assist the deep penetrative voice that comes out. When we were talking about inspiration and examples of such figures we came out with a gremlin of Gollum from 'Lord of the Rings'.
I personally always like to refer or get my ideas from previous work and character choices people have explored. The more movies and theatre you watch, the more knowledge you have on what is successful.
Olivia Kiely: We decided that Olivia would fit the vulnerable side to evil so she embodies the character of young childish girl. In horrors, for example, children are often used as we deem them as less likely to do anything bad or commit a bad crime. However director are able to subvert our expectations and utilise youth to become the eyes and mouth of darkness. An image I had in mind was the girl from Orphan, or even that scary girl we know who seems very much in her own world holding a balloon in her hands. She uses a higher register and pitch to emphasise her age.
Eleanor: Eleanor chose to be the more playful one of our group. She hisses and smiles a lot as if she were in control of Mau's body and choices, almost sees it as a game. It includes a fast pace in her walk and very relaxed motion in her posture.
Myself: I gave our group the whole idea of individual characterisation and had lead on to explore Lara's character and Olivia's. I already had in mind that someone would play with audience subversion (that person being the young girl) and have someone embody the gut and throat of our piece( Lara). I gave Lara the idea of going down lower to contrast every other character and thought it would visually look could with a range of platforms. Key things we could play with was pace, voice and platforms. Another idea I had for Olivia's character was skipping ; fiddling and really having fun in playing a younger body who can seem quite possessed or mental at the same time. After having come up with ideas for the other girls I was unsure of what I could do and it would come across in my piece so i needed to make some sort of a strong decision.
In the end I decided to be the feminine, mythical-siren form of the group. A figure of death or evil who could flirt or use lust as a tool to persuade her victims into her trap. I had a lot of ideas of what I could physically do and had chosen from:
- keeping the body in one pace and observing with the head angled down
- deciding not to blink
- watch intensely and fiercely
- slowing down words to give them depth and connotations of flirt
- slowing down the walk but striking at some points to contrast to previous pace
All these ideas developed from the mythical character of the siren. A beautiful yet dangerous creature which lured sailors with their enchanting music and voices to their side. A clear picture I had was the sirens from the 2003 movie, 'Peter Pan'. Even as a young child they frightened me but at the same time was fascinated and mesmerised by.
Where some of my ideas came from:
1) Deciding not to blink: I feel like the mythical creature of a siren wouldn't necessarily blink at it's prey or victim , just like medusa (a Greek God) which was why i chose to blink as little as possible. I didn't do just as a minor thing but to assist deep stares and gazes at Mau. In addition I watched an actor's interview from the film 'Warm Bodies' where he told the director, as a zombie he shouldn't really blink. Surprisingly the director told him then not to and so it leaded onto being a challenge from then on.
2) Slowing down the walk but striking at some points to contrast to previous pace: when i watched the siren from 'Peter Pan' if they didn't get what they wanted once trying to lure the boy in, they dashed back in to the sea with a quick tail whip. It was very sudden and that was when you realised how evil and sinister those creatures were.
Overall I thought my choice of the siren was coincidentally quite well with the theme of our play and it being revolved around sea and various creatures.
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