´In what way have you used your research to inform your choices for the development of your character and the overall project?
I have used research to inform the choices behind my character/project development in many ways; one example of this is my usage of the notes taken during the Q&A with “Grimm Life” creator, David Ayres.
During this Q&A, as a class we asked the following questions and were given these responses:
What influences were there? Was there anything specific that inspired the story?
⁃ Cater to children; allow plenty of young actors to have a chance on stage
⁃ Low budget, learned to work around it by using copyright free material
How long did it take to write the script?
⁃ Started in 2020, but it never really stopped being written as it is constantly able to be adapted
Why did you chose the Grimm fairytales?
⁃ Malleable characters/story, everybody knows them and copyright free.
Did you want the characters to be adapted or true to their source material?
⁃ Keep some aspects of the original stories whilst adapting them slightly too.
What gave you the idea for giving the princesses modern jobs?
⁃ Funny, used to know a nightclub called ‘The Love Apple’ and found it fitting
⁃ Cinderella got the most vain job (chat show host) to fit her vanity and changed personality
What would you change about it now?
⁃ Cut down a lot of the bigger passages
What message do you hope to convey through Grimm Life?
⁃ Social media can be toxic, but it can also be helpful.
What did you find most challenging about the process of creating Grimm Life?
⁃ Structure was challenging; trying to hit the typical story template as well as staying true to the characters’ motives and personalities.
What aided you in creating Grimm Life?
⁃ Honest, constructive criticism.
What advice would you give to young people in the Performing Arts field?
⁃ Develop thick skin and adapt to rejection.
What do you wish you had been told before you got into this field?
⁃ It takes a phenomenal amount of hard work. You’ve got to work just as hard for yourself than anyone can for you.
This information and advice Ayres gave us, it allowed me to put together a general grasp of the show’s characters and intentions, such as conveying the message that social media can be toxic and addicting, however it can also be used for incredible things such as sharing stories and art. Using this, I was able to see the characters in a new light and truly understand the meaning behind the small details throughout the show and the story as a whole, as well as the ending in which Carly uses her phone to defeat the main villain, Lord Boseman even though he originally invented phones to suppress the younger generation’s capabilities.
With this new perspective, I adapted my character accordingly, developing a small backstory and motivations for;
Frankie is a dwarf from a magical time on Earth that is adjusting to the mundanity of the modern world post-technology takeover. All he knows are the rules of the forest he was raised in alongside other dwarves, including his 6 best friends whom he split off from the woods with and now shares residence between. Being raised in an environment where it’s every dwarf for himself was tough, so he had to become tougher, he had to adapt to a certain set of rules.
- You can’t become too attached to anyone or anything, because you could lose it to just about anything in an instant; whether that’s your family and home to the dangers of magic used for evil, or someone you thought you could trust to betrayal.
- You can’t be squeamish; life in the forest surrounded by dangerous creatures who are often out to get you for their own sick gain means that you have to be ready to fight for your life with creatures of all different shapes, sizes, strengths and capabilities. Being as small as a dwarf means you have to compensate, learn the tricks and cheats so you can survive. Anything can end in bloodshed.
- There’s one thing that separates the men from the animals in Frankie’s world; money. Money is power, and anyone who has plenty of it is untouchable. So if you see an opportunity to take some, do not question it.
But living in a world where those rules no longer hold up left Frankie feeling useless. That was all he knew, so he had to stick to what he knew. Snow White invested the last of her savings as a royal into a nightclub in order to keep the cash flowing since it was draining fast with her story being lost to the war on technology, and the dwarves were hired as muscle to keep things in check. Without turning to a life of crime and ending up in Super Max with Red, this was all he and his boys could do. Beat up lousy drunks for a minimum wage and slam liquor after hours. This is the job, he convinced himself, don’t question the job.
I have also used research to inform the choices behind my character by replaying a game that I found to be very similar to Grimm Life. This game is called “The Wolf Among Us”, which also entails fairytale creatures in a modern day society, taking on regular jobs. The main character is Bigby Wolf, the Sheriff of Fabletown in New York, formally known as The Big Bad Wolf in the magical world him and the other fairytale creatures/characters hail from.
Bigby’s job as Sheriff means he has to keep the peace between the magical folk, ensuring that those who don’t exactly look human purchase magical disguises named “glamours” in order to give the appearance that they are in fact human. These glamours are used to prevent mundane humans, known as mundies, from discovering that magical beings have been living on Earth for 100s of years.
The Sheriff works alongside Snow White for the majority of the game, whose role in their society is that of deputy mayor. Their mission for this story is to solve the strange string of murders within their community, people who have been living in Fabletown for centuries now turning up dead in the most peculiar and gruesome ways.
Snow White, a character in the story Grimm Life that my own character Frankie is rather close with, features heavily in this game. This allowed for me to take inspiration. Much like in our play, this rendition of Snow White also suffers from trauma due to what happened to her, which she does not go into detail about, but does display how it hurt her. The game’s job at showing how Snow feels about her past without explicitly stating her feelings and her dedication to doing what’s right when standing up to evil allowed for me to create a greater idea of how my character should view her and her story in my head due to the different portrayals’ similarities.
´In what way have you used your research to develop your skills in performing arts?
Associating the play with something I already love through their shared similarities allowed for me to get even more invested in the project, which pushed me to work harder on learning my lines quickly instead of allowing myself to procrastinate until the very last minute. I also worked on developing my character further despite how minor the role was, which may sound a tad ridiculous, but really does help get you into character quicker. It also gets you more invested into the project in my opinion as you actually begin to view your character as a person as opposed to as just a few lines you have to read out on stage, which in turn assists in actualizing the story as a whole and bringing it to life for your audience. I used to not bother too much with developing anything for my characters if they only had a minor role because I didn’t see much point otherwise, since their depth wasn’t something that would be explained on stage. However, through this play I developed this skill further, simply starting out as something I joked about for my own enjoyment with friends to becoming fully-fledged beings that I bring to life on stage. I do believe this helps me perform better as it allows for me to truly act, rather than just read aloud a few lines, therefore I have developed both my skill for character development and acting as a whole.
´Give us a brief synopsis of the plot.
The concept of Grimm Life in summary is that of the fairytale characters written by the Grimm Brothers taking on lives in the modern world, having forgotten their pasts and suffering the effects of the villains in their stories in a realistic fashion, such as Snow White developing PTSD due to what The Evil Queen did to her and Little Red Riding Hood becoming a wolf-hunter out of resentment for The Big Bad Wolf. The villains of their stories continue their roles as antagonists, the main villain (Lord Boseman) decided after one of the many instances in the past in which he was defeated by the Grimm Crew to invent cellular devices in order to brainwash today’s youth and rid them of any imagination. In doing so, he has made them less of a threat to their villainy as the fairytale characters have less power once forgotten. This forces them to move on with their lives in a mundane world void of magic, having to pick up regular modern-day jobs, such as Cinderella now going by “Cinders” and becoming a famous, well beloved chat-show host and Snow White becoming the owner of a night club named “The Love Apple”. Instead of being able to reap the benefits of their “happily ever afters” once permitted by the bounds of the magical time they lived in, they have to face the consequences of their stories in a realistic sense. You can’t just get away with gutting any wolf you see with an axe unprovoked without facing animal cruelty charges, nor can you sustain a marriage in which you prepare flies for dinner every night. In a new age with no magics, there’s little room left for excuses and the fairytale characters must challenge themselves to do better and adapt to the everchanging fluidity that is life on Earth, instead of expecting to live the same false “all’s well that ends well” narrative that they believed to be promised after defeating their villains everyday until they die. It is left down to the Grimm Brothers’ grandchildren, Will and Carly Grimm, to round up these fairytale characters and help them to remember their stories and put them into a new perspective by sharing them with the younger generation in order for everyone to learn and grow from them, including themselves, instead of clinging onto the past. They are now able to use their restored magic and the wonders of the new world to bring the old crew back together and defeat the villains once and for all, restoring imagination within the kids and making it possible for social media to be used for good and creativity as opposed to suppressing such things.
‘Further Analysis.
This story, once looked at deeper, appears to me like an allegory for adapting to the long-term effects of trauma and trying to move forward, even though everything may have changed. Life seems so fantastical and magical when looked at through the rose-tinted glasses of hindsight after experiencing traumatic events, much like the way the characters in this story describe their lives to have been before their villains harmed them in their stories. Even after trauma is experienced, it still has some sort of a make-believe feel to it when it’s still fresh as it hasn’t been processed, making it feel surreal and fictional such as the climax of their tales. Then, as Lord Boseman took over, life from then on is described as grey and numb, much like the effect trauma has on ones ability to perceive life and the world around them. His reign truly did make the future seem incredibly bleak and nihilistic, not an ounce of imagination or free-will in sight and entirely hopeless to improve. These characters even showcase this with real-world symptoms of trauma related to their stories, for example:
Snow White, having been pronounced dead on multiple occasions due to the Evil Queen’s several attempts on her life, developed PTSD relating to strangers. More specifically, strangers knocking on her door or the possibility of doors beholding people wishing to harm her. This trauma is clearly indicated to hold mass amounts of control over her life as she isn’t even willing to open the door to her former friends in fear of it being another trick to end her life. Because of this, the princess keeps herself isolated deep within her nightclub, so much so that she is no longer used to even hearing her own name. She is later shown to be having a panic attack whilst being overwhelmed with flashbacks of her trauma after being locked in the prison Riding Hood is jailed within which has “too many doors”. This setting, resembling specific triggers for her presumably untreated PTSD, causes Snow to relive her trauma inside her own mind as she drops to the ground in her dissociative state and attempts to perform self-soothing methods via rocking herself back and fourth. Dissociation, panic attacks, mistrust, flashbacks, avoiding triggers that remind you of your trauma and self-soothing methods are all very common and serious symptoms of PTSD, or in the case of individuals who have experienced multiple traumatic events/prolonged trauma like Snow White, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD).
Similarly, Red Riding Hood now all grown up, shows clear signs of PTSD because of her experience with The Big Bad Wolf. Sudden bursts of rage, paranoia, as well as a prolonged theme throughout her life of bottling up emotions and pushing them to the back of her mind in order to prevent thinking about said trauma, are well-known experiences reported by those who suffer from PTSD. She even seems to struggle recalling her trauma without slipping into a state in which she appears to relive the events, an example of this being shown just before she tells her story to crew. She begins to state her desire to get revenge on the wolf, wishing to disembowel it with her axe, showing clear signs of not realizing she is indeed in the present and not reliving her trauma, as well as her anger management issues becoming more prevalent. Stiltskin reassures her that she has nothing to worry about as she already took care of the wolf, even stating that she has “crippling PTSD” before coaxing her onto tell her story.
However, this does not mean that their lives are over or even ruined because of what they went through. They still suffer from the effects of their trauma, of course, but after opening up and therefore receiving support from their peers, they are able to begin healing. A metaphor for this healing used in the play would be the adaptation of magic interfused with technology. Carly Grimm, an imagis, used her magical ability of bringing fiction to life through her cellphone, a product of modern technology. This modern technology was intended to harm mankind, much like the various traumas suffered by the characters in the show were intended to harm them, but by adapting to the changes in life brought about by this, they were able to develop new ways of living and coping with their struggles.
This of course isn’t to say that all trauma can be a “good thing” and always has a silver-lining that can be turned into a super-power so long as you “look on the bright side”, but it does mean that suffering through life-altering events out of your control does not mean that your life is ruined forever, it just means that your life is now different. Things may never be the same as they were before, and they may be bad for a while. And that will be hard. But things can be good again; just in a different way.
This outlook on the story allowed me to develop my character Frankie’s empathy. While he is portrayed as a barbaric, impish, money-hungry and blood-thirsty drone, he along with the rest of the seven dwarves are shown to have soft-spots outside of cash. He clearly cares for Snow White and holds loyalty to her, even if he becomes temporarily blinded by his materialism. This is blatantly conveyed by the dramatic, over-the-top sobbing over her corpse after she dies, his protectiveness of her (even outside of a “transactional-agreement to be her security” standpoint) and his subtle ways of showing understanding of her struggles.
When Snow yells at The Frog Prince for nearly being responsible for her potential fourth death, Frankie puts a hand on her shoulder and gives her a gentle pat as he shoots her a sympathetic look. His expression then once again drops to one of aggression as he turns back to face The Frog Prince. These small acts are representative of the fact that Frankie isn’t used to being affectionate having being raised with other dwarves displaying violent and selfish tendencies, even before he and his 6 friends decided to split off by themselves, but he understands what she has gone through and the effect this still has on her today. He makes an effort to comfort her and show empathy in the best way he can despite his unfamiliarity with such a thing, which shows how much he truly cares for her since he goes out of his comfort zone to do so.