About The Cheshire Cat, As Portrayed By Hayley Cooper.

In order to get into character, and design my character, I've had to look into a lot of the previous versions, as well as other evil characters, as traditionally, The Cheshire Cat is not portrayed as evil, merely mischievous, and as I wanted to play an evil character, but I also enjoyed the idea of The Cheshire Cat I simply had to combine the two.

In order to do this I knew i would have to redesign the typical idea of the character. So I started with the basics.

Costume & Makeup.

Because this character, in the original cartoon was portrayed as pink and purple, I opted to keep these colours as they are bright, playful and ever so slightly fitting with the evil motif. I decided to not include my costume in the costume departments production role as I wanted the costume to be very much my own design, as well as the fact that I intended to keep it once performances were done, as I enjoy collecting costumes. This was the basic design for my costume.

First Draft Costume Design

Followed by original makeup designs...

First Draft Makeup Designs.

The makeup has changed the most out of the designs, the costume however, has only subtle differences.

The makeup now looks as follows

Without wig, Final Chosen Design (The White Spaces above eyes to be painted yellow, I was just not in possession of any at the time.)

With wig, collar, fingerless leather gloves and prosthetic fangs. (White spaces above eyes to be filled in yellow, as above.)

There are currently no photos of my finished costume, as although it is completed, i have lacked the time to take any, however, this is an updated drawing of my completed costume.

Final Costume Design.

Once i had designed the look of my character, I began to work on personality.

I created my version of this character as a snobbish, rude, and arrogant cat, who is also rather intelligent, but very aware of it, and often suffers delusions of grandeur, believing himself to be far more intellectual than he actually is. He is crafty, and will befriend anyone he has to in order to better his lifestyle. He will befriend those high in power, hence his closeness to The Red Queen, who is an easy target as she has a tendency to be ditsy, and easily distracted. In order to gain her trust, all The Cheshire Cat would have had to do would be to appear overly interested in her, and occasionally compliment her, regardless of personal opinion. If it will better him, he will do it.

I based my character heavily on Scar from The Lion King, especially vocally, I chose a posh British Accent, with a low tone and slow speech because this is how he speaks, also i felt the accent would fit because of the regal setting.

  This video is a good example of his vocal abilities, on which mine were based, as well as sarcasm and spiteful way of talking.

I took screen shots of Scars poses and physicality from a few scenes of this movie to demonstrate how i have based movements on him.

Scar Stalking Prey, I take note of the placement of the front paws (or in my case hands) and the arched back.

Scar Hunched over, shouting at Hyenas down below him. I like this shot because it shows the power between the two characters, and that Scar is the higher power. This is something I want to emulate, a constant sense of looking down on other characters.

A cunning smile, which is a must for my character, as The Cheshire Cat is so well known for his Cheshire Smile.

Scar in the heat of devising an evil plan. This expression, although slightly frightening, is something i enjoy because it gives a sense of something truly evil in children's entertainment. His smile is once again something i want to emulate.

I enjoy this particularly because it is almost flamboyant whilst being evil, which is a huge character trait of The Cheshire Cat i am portraying.

A laid back scar looks down on others. - I enjoy this because this pose is one my character frequently takes, a high and mighty pose that is also rather lazy in appearance.

I enjoy this photo just because it emphasizes how i want to appear to the audience.

A hunched over Scar wallows in self pity. - I enjoy this because of the spine and lowness of the head. It shows a very crooked character which is how i want to appear.

 

However, Scar is not the only one i have based my character on.

I have taken a lot of inspiration from the musical CATS for obvious reasons.

One character to catch my interest was the character Macavity, he is rarely seen because of his sneaking abilities, so he is only seen if he chooses to be, which i would like to think is like my character, especially as The Cheshire Cat can vanish at will.

Here are some photos of Macavity that i thought were good to learn from.

 

Here's a video about the character. I find this song is really really useful for getting into character, and i listen to it whenever I need to get into character, often as i get into costume and apply makeup. This video is a good example of how Macavity leaves behind disaster and destruction in his path. This character is someone my character would look up to. If my character's ego was small enough to consider idolizing anyone but himself.

Another character from CATS i would compare my character to would be The Rum Tum Tugger.

The Rum Tum Tugger is a flirtatious Tom Cat, he is big headed, fussy, and very full of himself, he conducts himself with the utmost heir of importance and is constantly flirting with all the female cats in town.

He is a lazy cat that thinks the world of himself, which is a trait he and my character share.

The last two characters from CATS that i based my character around are actually a double act, twins, they are Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The two cats are supposedly the most notorious cat burglars in all of London. They are mischievous, playful and troubelsome, and i took these traits to create my character.

One thing i particularly take from CATS is their movement skills, although they are obviously acrobats and dancers, i find the way they glide across the floor on all fours to be amazing, I want to try to copy this movement on stage, or at least make my movements bigger.

As it stands currently, my movements are catlike, however they are still too subtle for pantomime, so I have to work on making them bigger.

Fortunately for me, my conservatory, at night, functions almost as one large mirror, reflecting myself and my movements back at me, meaning I can see how i look when i move, so working on it is much easier than simply taking advice from others and working on that.

When I can get the chance, I often rehearse lines, songs or just movement in there so that i can make sure that i am getting it right, and can find areas to improve.

The last area of inspiration for me was both the original and new Cheshire Cats, though this was more appearance and vocals more than anything, as the personality traits are not as similar to mine.

However, i did take much inspiration for the costume from the original cartoon design.

Using the pink purple and yellow motif, with my own punky additions of spiked collars, fingerless leather gloves, studded belt, ripped shorts (see The Rum Tum Tugger for an idea.)

This clip is also a great example of the voice i wanted, however, it would have to be much bigger, as this is for a pantomime, so it would need to be less subtle.

These are all the things i have used to create my character. However I am still developing it and still working on how to make it more evil, as recently, the evil characters all received feedback stating that the evil team did not come across as evil enough, to combat this, i created a powerpoint designed for the evil characters, helping to make them come across as more evil, myself included.

I find it harder to make my character evil, as my character was never a traditionally evil character, so i am having to play on the idea of mischief, and play highly on the idea of a self inflated ego, laziness and disregard for others. My movements need to be slicker, bigger and more interesting, and my vocals need to sound more like Scar and Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat.

 

https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=DBDD3B196F0C2CAB&resid=DBDD3B196F0C2CAB%21175

Here is the link for the slideshow i created.

22 Days Until Showtime.

Tonight we have a 3-7 rehearsal after school, and a lesson 4th period with Sarah on rehearsal.

Rehearsals tonight will be the whole of act one, including extras and dancers with as much costume as we have currently (as some are being rented, but due to price we cannot have the costumes until a week before performance).

Rehearsal schedules have been drawn for the next two weeks.

23 Days Until Showtime.

Since blocking the scenes and staging the entire script, we have been focused heavily on rehearsal, including the rehearsal of songs, we are now approximately 23 days away from our first performance, and we are having a runthrough of act one during a 3-7 after school rehearsal. We are now at a stage where everything is slowly coming together, and everyone is off of scripts, minus a few forgotten lines, we are not yet ready for performance but I believe the next 23 days will be used effectively and hopefully we will get all we need done.

Posters and tickets are going out this week, I have been designer for these posters, and there are multiple character posters going out, as of yet I do not have photos of all of the characters to make the rest of the postes, due to a techincal issue with the camera, but I aim to have all of the posters done by the end of the week, and they will begin to go out as soon as they are printed.

Performance wise, I have learnt all of my lines, however I need to work on learning cues for when those lines fall, as occasionally I won't realise my line follows another. Other than that I believe I have developed my character effectively, but I need to constantly work on projection, regardless of the fact that i will have a radio mic, I cannot let vocal projection slip.