Character Development: Fairy

As well as being a Merrivale villager I was given the opportunity to be one of the fairies that accompanied the Fairy Godfather. In early rehearsals I was quite static and lacked any kind of characterisation. It wasn’t until I received feedback that the fairy scenes were flat that I realised that I hadn’t made much effort into creating a character.

Once given this feedback I went away to create a specific character. Through discussion with the others we decided to create “stereotypical” characters, which lead to a “Goth”, “Cute”,  “Dumb” and “Dance” fairy.

I chose to be a “Dance” fairy as previously having done dance classes and watching several dance films I had a vast choice of elements to bring to my character. Examples of this included skipping in a graceful manner whenever I made an entrance on stage. This “gracefulness” is generally attributed to fairies, but I over-emphasised it by creating large swinging arm movements along with a simple sway of my body to add a dance element.

This step in developing my character was only the beginning as although I was bringing more character onto the stage the fairy scenes were still lacking any kind of interaction and the scenes had no energy. As a group we spent time running through our scenes to help develop a relationship between the fairies.

Act 1, Scene 2 is when the fairies first make their appearance and so we spent time working on the set up for this scene. In this scene the fairies are pretending to be trees, and so we discussed how we would pose. I decided on posing with my hip jutting out and my arms and branches rounded over my head in a way similar to that of a ballet dancer. I found that going into this position would make it clear to the audience what character I was. Ola took the role of the “Goth” fairy "Droopy" and so her pose contrasted mine as her pose was more reluctant as her arms remained close to her side and she slouched to suggest boredom. Whereas I took on an upright posture as dancers often look tall when they take to the stage to perform.

 

The moment when Cinderella teaches Buttons how to dance gave me another opportunity to develop the character of my fairy, which eventually became named “Dancer”. When “Jump on it” begins to play I would throw my tree branches to the floor and begin to stretch out my arms to show my eagerness at getting to dance, and then while performing the routine I would get really into it.  

An example of the stretches I performed on stage.

 

 

This photo shows the confidence and enjoyment during "Jump on it" as it is a moment for Dancer to "shine" amongst her fellow fairies.

 

I found that once I was more comfortable in the role I was able to add little dance moves during scenes to show that my mind was always on dance in one way or another, and this would result in being reprimanded by the Fairy Godfather for losing focus.

In the beginning I can honestly say that as a group we weren’t putting enough effort and thought into our fairies, but by the time we reached our final rehearsals and first shows we found that the fairies were very approachable for an audience. Children in particular found the fairies interaction enjoyable.