Many actors are known for their ability to physically transform into another character. It can be very impressive when actors are able to become completely unrecognisable from themselves through their physicality. Physicality is a crucial part of character creation. I have put together a toolbox of exercises you can use in order to transform into your character.

Not only that, but these can also help you get further insight into who your character is and how they tick. No matter what, these are sure to help you explore and create complex and interesting characters. So, here is your guide to creating a character’s physicality for actors.

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As always, take what works for you and leave what doesn’t. Always give everything a go. Use your imagination and pay attention to what is meaningful and connects with you. There is no wrong answer and whatever you express and discover is perfect and unique to you!

Starting From Neutral

As an actor, one of the most crucial aspects of your craft is your character’s physicality. It can make or break a performance, and it’s important to get it just right. But what exactly is “neutral physicality,” and why is it so important?

Neutral physicality refers to the way an actor carries themselves, the way they move and hold their body when they are not actively portraying a specific character. It’s essentially a blank slate that can be built upon with different mannerisms, gestures, and postures to create a unique character. It’s like starting with a canvas that’s completely blank; and you have to establish a foundation before adding any details.

Getting neutral physicality right is important because it creates a foundation for your character that will inform everything else you do. If you start with a slouchy posture or with your shoulders hunched up around your ears, that will carry over into every other aspect of your performance. This should be the starting place from where we start all character physicality work. So, in order to get into neutral physicality:

1. Place your feet hip-width apart, facing forward with your weight distributed evenly over the entire foot.
2. Soften your knees. Make sure they are not bent but they are not locked tight with tension either.
3. Tilt your hips all the way forwards. Then all the way back. Then side to side. Repeat these movements, and make them smaller and smaller until your pelvis is sitting centrally and not tilted in any one direction over another.
4. Imagine a piece of string attached to the top of your head and running through your spine. Imagine someone pulling the piece of string from above and let your spine lengthen upwards.
5. Roll your shoulders back gently and let your shoulder blades melt down your back.
6. Roll your head a few times before letting it come to sit centrally over your spine, not tilted in any direction, but balancing evenly on top.

Starting from neutral is your blank slate and your starting point when creating character’s physicality for actors.

Research

Research is also a great place to start work on a character’s physicality for actors. There are many reasons why research can be a helpful tool in acting. It is a tool we use in order to familiarise ourselves with things that are not already familiar to us.

Hopefully, before you have started working on your character’s physicality, you have gone through the script and mined it for information about the character. You should already be familiar with some of the elements of themself and their life that are not familiar to you. Some examples of this may be:

• Time period in which they lived
• Social class
• Profession

It is a great job to go and research any of these elements and, while doing so, thing of the effect these might have on their body and physicality.

For example, someone living in upper Victorian society will have been taught specific things about how they should hold themselves, which can influence their characterization.

Someone with a profession as a dancer may make them graceful, exhibiting a type of movement drama. A builder may move with more force and be good with their hands.

Make a note of the thoughts that come to you regarding physicality as you research your character’s life as it may give you ideas for what to explore in the physicality of your character.

Assigning Attributes

This one is one of my favourites, as it is directly connected to communicating the inner life of your character and is a very practical way to achieve this when creating a character’s physicality for actors. It can also be combined with many of the other techniques on this list.

It is an especially good idea to combine this with Laban’s efforts, elements, and Michael Chekhov’s psychological gesture. Here is how to put this into practice:

1. Come up with a list of 5 – 7 main attributes or personality traits of your character. These might be things like; ambitious, kind, shy, overthinker, vengeful.
2. Draw the outline of a figure on a piece of paper, like a gingerbread man.
3. Assign each of these attributes to a certain body part and write them on the gingerbread man. You can pick whichever you like. If you’re stuck for where to assign your attributes, the head, chest, stomach, hips, hands and feet are great places to go for.
4. For instance, overthinking may be placed in the head. Kind may be placed in the chest. However, this does not need to be the case. Kind may feel more appropriate in the hands, or head, depending on how your character experiences and expresses that kindness.
5. Get up and play around with how you may express these attributes in each body part you have assigned for them. If you have assigned kindness to the hands, play around and see how hands can hold and express kindness.
6. If you’re torn between a few body parts for where to assign an attribute, have a play around. Try the attribute in each body part and see what feels best to you. There’s no right answer, only what you feel is best for you!
7. Once you have explored each attribute in it’s assigned body part you can now put them all together. This may take a bit of practice and getting used to, but now you should have a physical map of your character’s personality traits and how they are expressed. Practice standing, moving, and doing different activities taking into account all of these attributes. You may choose to may some attributes more dominant than others. It is now your creation to play around with and mould as you see fit.

Laban’s Eight Efforts

Rudolf Laban created a system based around different movement qualities, known as Laban dance or Laban theatre. He identified four components – weight, direction and speed. Each of these has different forms they can take. These are:

• Weight – Heavy or Light
• Direction – Direct or Indirect
• Speed – Fast or Slow

As you can see these are quite straightforward and can be explored individually, for instance, moving quickly or moving with a heavy weight quality. In order to create a Laban effort, these are then combined in different combinations to create different overall qualities. There are as follows:

If you’re not familiar with these efforts the best way to go about it is to practice each element individually. Then try combining them. Move around the space in each effort. Get familiar with how each of them feels.

When creating a character, a few will probably jump out at you as being connected to your character.

For example, if I was playing a queen who was very sensible and gracious, then glide is the first to jump out at me. Or for a soldier, it may be punch. For a dreamer, it may be float.

Pick a couple that you feel apply to your character and try them out. Then pick a couple more that haven’t jumped out at you immediately and explore them too.

Sometimes in acting, the most interesting choice is not the most obvious one. You may be surprised at how choosing the less stereotypical option can help you gain insight into your character.

You can also combine these with the attributes in the last exercise. Explore your localised attributes with these efforts and see if you can gain a deeper understanding of them.

This is a great system in order to create overall character movement styles, as well as further exploring more specific elements of their physicality and gesture. This is a great way to create a character’s physicality for actors.

Check out my ultimate guide on How To Use Laban notation For Actors here.

Lecoq’s Undulations

Jacques Lecoq used many different techniques in his movement school, which focused on physical theatre techniques. One of these was undulations. This was used initially to help students broaden their range of spinal movement, however, it can be very helpful when creating a character’s physicality for actors.

This is a particularly good exercise for creating extreme or theatrical characters but can be useful in creating any kind of character. In this exercise, you do a spine roll in which you first lean forwards and then curve your spine to bend down and then shift your hips when you roll back up your spine to come up to standing.

This is a great tool you can use in order to create a character’s posture. Here are the steps to follow in order to explore this:

1. Get into a rhythm of doing undulations one after the other, until they flow into one continuous movement.
2. Stop at any point in the undulation. Your spin will be curved in a particular position depending on where you stop. You can stop at any point in the undulation you choose. You may be hunched over, leaning forwards, standing up tall, or any other spinal position within the undulation depending on where you stop. Hold the position.
3. Begin to walk and move with the posture. As you do think about what kind of character might have this position. What traits do they have? Are they arrogant? Curious? Lazy? How does the position make you feel? Sad? Lonely? Proud? It can be absolutely anything, just listen to your body and use your imagination. The more you explore, the more you will get a sense of what kinds of characters have what kind of posture.
4. If you are creating a character, listen to your body as you do the undulations. Stop whenever you arrive in a position that you feel resonates with your view on the character. Explore a few different positions and see what feels right, and what insights it might give you into the character and their psychology and feelings. Try taking the position to the extreme, and then try making it more naturalistic. All you have to do is explore and see what you can discover about your character and their potential physicality.

Watch This Video To See How To Do A Spinal Undulation

Leading Centre

This exercise can help you create a posture for your character, as well as gaining further insight into their psychology and their objectives. It essentially means exploring different body parts your character can lead with as they move. There are a couple of ways you can approach this exercise.

Stansilavski identified that characters are generally sorted into head, heart or gut characters.

• Head characters are internally led by their thoughts, intellect and intelligence.
• Heart characters are internally led by their feelings, emotions and passions.
• Gut characters are internally led by their instincts, desires and ambitions.

While every character uses all three to some extent, most tend towards one of these modes. See which category your character fits into. You may be torn between two and that’s okay. It may be that your character has a lot of internal conflict and that’s a great thing to know and explore.

Now you have your mode(s) try exploring them physically. Walk around the space allowing yourself to be led by your head, chest, or gut/stomach/hips. This means that area of your body always goes first in whatever movement you make, as if it is being pulled in that direction by a string and the rest of your body follows.

See how this makes you feel and what kind of insights this gives you into your character. You can even get very specific about it – for instance, does your head character lead from the nose or the forehead or one of their ears? If you are torn between two, try them both and see how they both feel.

If you feel conflicted between two, think about whether one is more natural to them and one is how they feel they should behave. For instance, does your more emotional character feel like they should be more logical? Is this a pressure that is put on them externally? This can be an interesting thing to explore physically.

Another way to approach this is to choose any body part and explore how it feels to lead with that body part. It could be your feet, your shoulders, your ribcage. Anywhere you like.

Move around the space leading with this body part and see how it feels, and what kind of character it makes you think of. You can combine it with the assigning attributes exercise, and lead with the body part with the attribute you feel is most dominant in your character.

This is a fun and and creative way of exploring character’s physicality for actors.

Elements

Elements are a great tool to use to explore your character’s physicality for actors. Throughout history, elements have been linked to different aspects of human psychology and personality. All you need to do for this exercise is to go through the elements of fire, water, air and earth and see how they inspire your movement.

1. Stand in neutral. Allow your feet to ground into the floor and make a solid connection. Imagine a strong beam running from the base of your feet, through your middle, and into the top of your head. This is your centre.
2. Now imagine that your centre is made of a certain element. Move around the space and see how it makes you feel. How does it affect your movement?
3. Imagine the movement flowing from the beam through your limbs, down to your fingers and toes. How does it make your entire body move?
4. Explore different varieties of each element. For fire, you can use a burning campfire, a forest fire, sparklers, fireworks, the sun. For water you could use the sea, a river, a babbling stream, a puddle. For Earth, mud, clay, cracked dry ground – just make sure it’s natural. For air, you could use a hurricane, a gentle breeze, or even imagine yourself as a balloon drifting through the sky. You can use any interpretation of these elements your imagination can think of and use it to explore your movement. Feel free to incorporate your voice too.
5. As you do this you should find a style of moving that connects to certain characteristics or resonates with the character you’re creating. Once you have found one, you can make it more naturalistic. Walk around the space in a way that incorporates the qualities you have discovered through your element.
6. You can also use this to explore your assigned attributes by localising an element to one of your body parts and seeing how it expresses one of the specific attributes of your character in that area.

Michael Chekhov and the Psychological Gesture

The psychological gesture was created by Michael Chekov in order to create one simple gesture that encapsulates your character’s psychology. It is a top technique when creating a character’s physicality for actors. There are some simple steps in order to achieve this gesture.

• Start with the assigning attributes exercise. For this, assign 5-7 character attributes to certain body parts.
• Explore these body parts using a system such as the laban efforts or elements. Apply these to each attribute and explore them. See if you can find a specific movement that encapsulates that attribute.
• Then make a short routine or sequence using each of these movements. Place them one after the other in a sequence that makes sense to you. Go through each movement in a sequence, making each movement separately, one after the other.
• Now let the movements flow into each other. Try and make it one fluid movement, going from one body part to the next without pausing.
• This is the basis of your gesture. Now you can play around with it. Make some movements bigger or smaller. Maybe some are subtle and some are obvious. Maybe you can link the two of them together. Begin to make it more natural – less dance-like and more like a human movement. Listen to your body and see what feelings and thoughts these movements create within you. This is an insight into your character’s physicality.
• Finally, you should have a movement that is a natural but specific full-body gesture. It should be one single fluid and complete gesture. This is your psychological gesture. It should allow you to connect quickly to your character’s psychology and physicality. Try making your gesture and speaking some of your lines. How does it affect them? You can use this gesture before stepping on stage, or even incorporate it into movements you make during your performance in order to connect with your character.

If you want to explore this more deeply and in more detail, go and check out my dedicated post on psychological gesture.

Animal Work

Animal work was a favourite of Strasberg and often makes up an entire module of drama school training. So, it is a big one when creating a character’s physicality for actors. It has been used by many famous actors for iconic characters and is a favourite tool of many. In this exercise, you choose an animal and watch how they move. You then use that movement to inspire the movement of your character.

1. The best way to do this is to head to the zoo and watch the various animals behaving in person. However, is this is not available to you, you can also use videos and documentaries.
2. Think about what animal your character reminds you of. Think of their characteristics and what animals have those kinds of characteristics. If they’re playful and loyal, you may think of a golden retriever. If they’re mischievous, a monkey. If they’re dignified, a horse, if they’re sneaky, a fox, if they’re cautious, a rabbit. These are just some examples, but there are many animals that are linked to many different characteristics and you can choose any that you like. Let your imagination go wild, and don’t try to be too clever. Often, the most obvious choice to you in the best choice.
3. Observe your chose animal. Watch how they hunt, how they eat, how they sleep. Focus on each body part. How do their legs move? What rhythm do they have? What weight do they hold? How does their head move? Their spine? What body part do they lead with? Be as curious as possible, and notice as many specific things as you can.
4. Now try to replicate that animal’s movement as closely as possible. Incorporate everything you’ve used. This may mean you have to get on your hands and feet. First, focus on getting your movements as accurate as possible.
5. Then, try and spend some time as your animal. Go through their routine. Go through their hunting, sleeping, cleaning, and fighting experiences. Try and make the movement accurate, but also notice how it makes you feel. How does your animal approach and experience its life?
6. Now try and humanise your movement. Stand on your two feet. Walk. Do human activities. But keep in mind the movement and psychological elements of the animal you have explored. Incorporate where they lead, their posture, and their rhythm. Try and keep the feeling of the animal and their experience of life going inside – this is just a human version of it.

This will allow you to make specific and creative decisions about how your character moves. It will also link you to their instinct – their more animalistic urges and desires. This means you can root down really deep into your character’s inner nature and truth.

Stages of Life

This last exercise is a great way to explore how your character’s background has influenced who they are and how they move where we find them in the play. In this exercise, you physically move through your character’s life and literally grow up as them. It’s a great imaginative exercise when creating character’s physicality for actors. Hopefully, you have done some of the exercises to create a background for your character. If not, think about going and doing this first as it can help. However, this can also be used to explore and get an insight into your character’s history too, so don’t worry if you haven’t done this yet.

1. Baby. Curl up in the fetal position on the floor. Take a few deep breaths. Now begin to move as your character when they were a baby. Therefore you will be exploring movement when lying down. Think about your environment. Where are they? What do they see? Who is around them? What are their earliest experiences?
2. Toddler. Now you can begin to crawl, explore your space and play. Again think about their surroundings and who they might interact with.
3. Child. You can begin to walk. What is their experience as a young child? Who do they meet? Where do they go? How are they treated? How does this affect how they move and how they interact with the world around them?
4. Teenager. Go through the same process again. Think about their daily routine, their activities, and their interests. What is their environment? Who are their friends? How do they express themselves? What is their relationship like with the people they’ve interacted with when they were younger? How does this affect their movement?
5. Adult. Now explore their world as an adult. What is their life like? Who do they have relationships with and what are they like? How do they spend their time? How have their past experiences formed who they are and how they move and behave now?
6. Elderly. They are at the end of their life. What have they experienced? How does it affect them and their body? How do they feel about life? Who is in their life? How do they spend their time? Explore their world once again as an elderly person.

Try to make each stage of life flow into the next. Allow your character to grow and morph through their life into each stage. If you reach the age you’re at in the play, you can stop here and explore this. If you’d like to keep going to the end of their life you can. It can be a good exploration of how the events of the play go on to affect them in the long term.

Conclusion

Now you have a toolbox full of tools when creating character’s physicality for actors! Feel free to explore these as individual exercises, or you can pick a monologue or a character from a play and work on creating a character. Feel free to keep practising these as much as you like, as the more you do them the more you will understand them.

Go and check out my post on creating characters to see what other steps you can take in order to create a fully formed and complex character. It’s not all about physical transformation, you know!

I hope you found my post helpful, and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.