My Charcters

 In Peter Pan the part I had been given was the role of John Darling. I was also a given the choice if I wanted to be a pirate or lost boy as part of ensemble I chose to take on the role of a lost boy for ensemble.

John Darling

For John this was an added challenge from last year as Tinman because it was less of a mature character. I have played more mature characters than child like characters that are very expressive, and bouncy. To show this I just made sure I was always smiling and always showing that my character was having fun when it was needed by doing big facial expressions. It was also an added challenge due to the singing aspect I never thought I would have to sing when joining this course. So when I heard that we were doing a musical I was little excited on top of being very nervous as singing on stage was something that scared me but I took the challenge head on. 

Movement was something I struggled with last year but with John this character was more free and loose and had to be alot more vibrant and energetic when moving around because he likes the idea of going to Neverland to fight some pirates. For example theres a line where the brave girls have just been attacked and John shouts "its the pirates" but instead of shouting it out of fear we changed it for him to be excited that the pirates are here so that he can feel the sense of danger and fight them and see if they are actually real because he's only heard stories. I also portrayed John as being protective of Michael like there were certain instances where if we were getting attacked I would grab Michael to hide with me or when Peter and Wendy are fighting or upset I would cover Michaels ears so that he wouldn't hear what Peter was saying about his mother replacing him. I was also more wary of the danger and threats than Michael but less than Wendy. I think what I could of done better was sort of talk in the more sophisticated way that Johns father talks. He also loves hearing Wendy's stories and I feel like at the starting scene when she's going through the books I portrayed my love for her stories really well, like pointing out pirates and silently laughing. The singing was a bit of a struggle for me for the shows a bit as I was recovering from losing my voice so I was finding it very hard to try and hit the notes so I had to work my way around it. 

John is written down as being fascinated with piracy which through the way of me saying the lines and always showing my excitement when pirates are mentioned really showed to the audience how fascinated he is by them. For my costume I had his top hat and glasses that he is commonly known for having and also I wore old style pyjamas as this was set back around 1950. 


Lost Boy

For my lost boy the costume I thought of when Kelly was talking about it was sort of woodland green clothes that have been cut and had accessories added to it. I made a glove out of a sock and then wore odd socks. I also made the decision to hot glue gun leaves to my costume and added them to a headband to sort of give off camouflage hunter vibes as my lost boy. I made sure I was always expressive and always in the moment. Like when being told that we were going to be having a real mother when meeting Wendy or when Wendy takes us back to London I showed excitement by jumping up and down with another lost boy. 

I always showed that we weren't disgusted by things like when Peter spits on Tootle's show I was smiling away and saying how good of an idea it was to the lost boy next to me whilst The Darling children were disgusted by it because they're more civilised then us and haven't grew up without parents in the woods. We all showed that we could portray kids in various ways and we found it better by pairing up with another ensemble lost boy so that we could bounce off one another to add more to the scene like when the pirates leave our den I immediately ran over to Ben and hugged him so that I knew he was safe and then started picking things up off the floor to see what they had destroyed in our camp. When we came back to London we showed how uncivilised we were when meeting Wendy's parents because some of us would be jumping up and down and poking Nana while also trying out the rocking chair. 

I didn't give my lost boy a name but I felt like when I had my costume I was in character and it fleshed out my character more being in that costume and having my prop which was a wooden spatula when it came to the fight scenes.