You may believe that you cannot represent an Indian chief or a British queen, or an Egyptian slave, or a secret service agent, but if you will recall your childish pastime of day-dreaming you will see at once that you have quite frequently identified yourself with some one else, and in that other character you have made yourself experience the strangest and most thrilling adventures.  When you study a role in a scene or play, use your imagination in that same manner.  In a short time it will be easy for you to think as that other character would.  Then you have become identified with him.  The first step in your delineation has been taken.

Visualize in your mind’s eye—­your imagination—­the circumstances in which that character is placed in the play.  See yourself looking, moving, acting as he would.  Then talk as that character would in those circumstances.  Make him react as he would naturally in the situations in which the dramatist has placed him.

Let us try to make this more definite.  Suppose a boy is chosen to act the part of an old man.  An old man does not speak as rapidly as a boy does.  He will have to change the speed of his speech.  But suppose the old man is moved to wrath, would his words come slowly?  Would he speak distinctly or would he almost choke?

The girl who is delineating a foreign woman must picture her accent and hesitation in speaking English.  She would give to her face the rather vacant questioning look such a woman would have as the English speech flits about her, too quickly for her to comprehend all of it.

The girl who tries to present a British queen in a Shakespeare play must not act as a pupil does in the school corridor.  Yet if that queen is stricken in her feelings as a mother, might not all the royal dignity melt away, and her Majesty act like any sorrowing woman?

EXERCISES

You are sitting at a table or desk.  The telephone rings.  You pick up the receiver.  A person at the other end invites you to dinner.  Deliver your part of the conversation.

1.  Speak in your own character.

2.  Speak as a busy, quick-tempered old man in his disordered office.

3.  Speak as a tired wife who hasn’t had a relief for weeks from the drudgery of house-work.

4.  Speak as a young debutante who has been entertained every day for weeks.

5.  Speak as the office boy.

6.  Speak as an over-polite foreigner.

7.  Delineate some other kind of person.

Improvisations are here given first because such exercises depend upon the pupil’s original interpretation of a character.  The pupil is required to do so much clear thinking about the character he represents that he really creates it.

Dialogues.  As it is easier to get two people to speak naturally than where more are involved we shall begin conversation with dialogues.  Each character will find the lines springing spontaneously from the situation.  In dramatic composition any speech delivered by a character is called a line, no matter how short or long it is.