Backstory

A backstory is what the characters been through right before the character comes on the stage. From their childhood to what they ate for breakfast in the morning. Although, you have to pick out the more relevant things that will help you understand your role completely. 

The motto that I really love is: "Don't Act, Be."

Knowing the backstory of your character helps you piece together how they've become who they are when they're in their scene on stage. For example little flinches could be as a result of being abused as a child. The past has a lot of impact on who you are today and thats just the same if you are a playing a character. In the play they are just as real as you and I. 

We made Adams backstory a harsh world for him as we thought his desperation to have friends would allow him to escape his home life. So his home life must be horrible. His mum always puts on a brave face, although she always has breakdowns and cries all the time. She needs her children to look after her and her children feel as though she has too much on her mind to burden her with there problems. So she's oblivious to Adam or his sisters issues. His sister is slightly messed up as she makes sour jokes out of it all to make it entertaining for her, she finds life glum and has never experienced anything good out of it only when she was a little child and that was a long time ago. She finds Adam annoying and hardly talks to him, the only time she talks to him is to crack a sarcastic and bitter joke. Adams dads dead and is replaced with an abusive boyfriend who turns up once a while to kill any sign of  contentment in the house. Adam has been hearing voices in his head, suffers from depression and releases the pain out by cutting himself. A very emotional and complicated story my group devised, as we think Adam only puts up with this dysfunctional relationship with his so called friends because dysfunctional is all he's ever known. 

A really effective piece was Leahs' story, it showed how her parents ignore her and how she doesn't mean to talk so much she just hates the emptiness of silence. She craves the attention as she is completely invisible to everyone. Almost the same as Adam yet she copes with it by talking and is just somehow socially higher than Adam. With this groups piece I started to understand the characters are more a like than I thought. Also all of  the talking from leah made the silence, as she realised no one was going to reply, was so effective and refreshing which gave the silence a strange impact.