Lonely Hearts Character

Wednesday 21st September 2022

For our first lonely hearts lesson we started off with getting a real-life advertisement that had been slightly changed to help us as well. These advertisements were published in their local newspaper, which showed how desperate my character was. I also got the example from reading my prompt that I had to be a nice genuine guy, that was filled up with all this sadness since being recently divorced. My character was in his early 40s and was looking for a sensible woman to travel with and fill that loneliness he has since his wife left him. 

We were then tasked with further developing our character to bring more detail to when we did the quiz. 

Wednesday 28th September 2022

We started the lesson off with getting told by Kelly we had to freshen our characters because we were told our characters were going out to find a date. So I pretended 'Roger' (My characters name) was putting on a tie and suit and doing his hair and putting aftershave on. We then had to walk around and hide something our character would be insecure about, then we had to find a partner and tell each other a secret, the secret I got told was that my wife cheated on me with the guy I ran into. We then had to find another partner and point out the person who told us the secret and tell the other person what there secret was just to warn them. We then had to get into small groups and do a quiz night, where I clashed with someone called Paula the entire time a question was wrong. So I wasted my time arguing with Paula when Roger could of been trying to talk to the other people that were in our group. We were also told to bring a prop in for today as well. I forgot to bring one in because I couldn't find a prop that suited my character, so instead I asked Kelly and she had a briefcase that I used. We would then walk around interacting with different people, in our characters explaining why we had the prop we did. This is when after the quiz we were asked to go other to someone we thought we had a match with. I later spoke to Geoffrey's character who asked me on a date. Even though Geoffrey's character was a boy and Roger wasn't looking for a boy but I became desperate as nobody was being in a partner with me. We were then tasked with finding a photo of what we think our character looks like and a gift for the character we matched with to bring for next week and hide it from our partner till we had finished the date we were on. 

Something I could of done better is be more prepared to bring a prop instead of relying on the costume and prop room to have it for me. Also working on getting out of my comfort zone and talking to newer people but this was still very early in the start of college so I was still getting used to meeting newer people so I was still working on coming out of my comfort zone. 

Wednesday 5th October 2022

I found what Roger looked like and I found a gift for Geoffrey's character. Geoffrey was late to this lesson so I spent the first part alone till Laura (who was played by Gracie) came along and decided to be my new date. The only problem was I did not have a gift for Laura as it was unexpected. We were tasked with having to get with our partner and to get to know them a bit better to see if we would still go along with the date. We had lots in common and decided to go ahead with it, we had a choice of three date ideas, bowling, restaurant or a bar. I asked her out to go to the restaurant to eat food with me. I went away and got myself ready to which I met up with her and pulled her chair back so she was able to sit down. We ordered our meals and got some drinks, I decided not to have any alcohol whereas Laura did (this ties into a later task of the lesson). When we were on the date Kelly told us to come up with something that would cause a rift between us to see if it would work around it or if it would ruin the entire date. We were also told to come up with an annoying factor that we would do on the date. My annoying factor was that I gulp with very sip I take, I don't think I made it noticeable enough as when Laura pointed Roger out for it she asked why I drink too fast instead of  why I was gulping after every sip. When asked to make a tiny argument we had to choose if we wanted to be 1 or 2. Laura (Gracie) was 1, I (Roger) was 2. Laura had to choose a topic to bring up and I had to disagree with her to see how she would react and if it would ruin the date or not. Anyways the topic she brought up was about her dog to which said I don't like dogs as much as when Roger was younger he was attacked by a big dog and was slowly starting to trust the little dogs. Turns out her dog was little so I said I could try and make it work, but apparently if the dog wouldn't of liked me it would of never of worked out with Roger and Laura. We were then asked after our breaks if we would go on a second date which we said we would as it worked out for us, after the dates we moved on to alcohol anonymous meetings, we were told we could stay in characters if we wanted or we could be a completely different person. Me and Gracie decided to stay as Roger and Laura as it fit into our date since I didn't have a drink since I was a recovering alcoholic and Laura had multiple drinks because she is an alcoholic but she wants to stop. 

Something I would change is not laughing as much when awkward situations come up because I had a tendency to laugh. Also when doing my annoying factor I need to build on it more and make it more noticeable that I was gulping so that my next partner I work with I don't end up confusing.