A View From The Bridge: Character Workshop Methods/Exercises

Over time we have done these exercises: 

Off text improvisation
We were in our Beatrice & Catherine pairs and had to come up with two improvisation scenes which would not have happened within the play. At first we wanted to create  a scene which was just after Eddie had died or at Eddies funeral. However this would not have helped us improve on our characters as it was not a scene that would have occurred throughout the play.
Instead we chose when Beatrice was taking Catherine for her job interview and also before the cousins arrive when Catherine was sent into the kitchen. Within the play Eddie sends Catherine to clean up the dishes but we do not see the scene within the kitchen, we just see the cousins arrive.
We only improvised one scene which was the one within the kitchen. Although some of the things we said within our improvisation were wrong, we still tried. We did struggle with improvising on the spot but it is helpful in case anything ever goes wrong within the play for someone to improvise on the spot.
Doing these scenes gave us sense of the types of conversations Catherine would've had with Beatrice and how they both were when Eddie was around.
We all showed our scenes but only gave one group tips on how they could improve their scene as they started laughing and didn't do anything. After we gave them tips they re done the scene but struggled again. Then we were all going to say 'stop' and take over from one character. But no one did do this.


'Wizard Of Oz Game'
This exercise is when you come up with a key line that a character says with a gesture. Since there were 3 Beatrice's and 3 Catherine's, each Catherine came up with their own key line for each section and the same with each Beatrice. I came up with 'I got a new skirt, you like it?' and ran my hands over the skirt. This helps us memorise something the character says and we can link together the characters.

 Conscious Alley
At first I did not understand this game. It was when we chose a situation that the character was in and everyone else stood on either side of this character. One side was saying reasons for not doing something and the other was saying the reasons for doing something.
We chose Eddie and his situation of calling the immigration police or not. I was on the side of reasons for calling immigration. I came up with reasons such as 'You'll have your niece back' and 'Rodolpho will be gone'. But as I was on the end I had to come up with two thoughts on the spot and in a row. I struggled with this more because I didn't understand this exercise and wouldn't really know what Eddie would think because I was not playing Eddie. But then that was the point of this. If a character went wrong on stage, with us knowing their thoughts we could contribute to what is going on on stage.
We also put Catherine in the situation of loving Rodolpho. I came up with reasons that I thought she would like him from when I played Catherine such as 'He's a blonde'. Other people said about how Rodolpho cooked and created dresses.
I personally found that this game didn't help me because I wasn't in the Alley but I did also struggle with what was going on.

Status Game
With this we used cards with numbers 2-10 and a Queen, King and Jack.