Today, we did an acting workshop with the actor Sally Carpenter. This workshop meant a great deal to me as an actor, but also I have learnt so much from Sally. I think seeing an actor that has done really well gave me hope and motivation to always keep going as an actor.Sally taught us all sorts of things today, some examples are the characters back line; this is the characters backstory. Some key features Sally explained was that creating a character backstory is key, as it determines to an actor with they do as the character.I found this shocking as an actor, as I knew that creating backstories was vital, but actually I learnt that I was doing it wrong. Sally taught me that within a backstory, you need to include as many things as you can, but also make them relevant to the character. She said an example of this was if someone was working class and shouting – their character backstory could be that their parents worked in a market and shouted for people to buy from their stall, therefore that’s where this character gets their shouting from, which makes so much sense! Here are the vital notes I toke from Sally :

As a group, we worked together practically the skills learnt on a script.We chose a character and then we used our knowledge of sense data, back line and how the character thinks of life to use as motivation for the characters actions in the script.I really loved this as I love acting, but also I found it really fun to work with my teammates while bringing a scene to life.

From this point, I need to go away and create a back line for my character Sam, I need to explore the character, and research everything based on the notes Sally gave us today.