Expressions and Emotions

The task at hand was to create a still frame of our own take of a family portrait. As ideas were brainstormed and passed around, our original idea of the ideal family had changed into a strange family dynamic. Our "family" had started out as the typical suburban family with the quintessential perfect couple and their children. In seeing that we needed to convey a sense of differing and varying emotions, we decided to give this ideal family a number of flaws. Rather than having two siblings who were in agreement with one another, one remained the happy-go-lucky child whereas the other became the hostile and disagreeable child. In this way, we were able to convey two opposing emotions of liveliness and irritation. To further create another element of peculiarity within this family portrait, we added the character of the husband's mistress who was peering out of the corner of the portrait. And so my role in this "family" was to portray the oblivious wife who believed that they epitomized the ideal family as she closed her eyes and smiled in the shot. The one piece of criticism for our portrait was the reality of our situation because in a realistic portrait, the mistress character would not be included and so it showed us that in an attempt to portray humor, we must think about the realistic aspects of a scenario.

Strangely enough, I noticed that there was a common motif of the flawed family. One portrait contained the couple in the process of divorce while another contained quarreling siblings. I suppose that many of us were drawn to the image of this family with faults because it could be portrayed with great humor as the characters were put in extreme situations. The idea of flaws and mistakes seem to be humorous because it's different from the typical, perfect model and is most likely why each portrait had the element of the flawed family. This activity helped me understand the importance of expressions and emotions in theatre because it's one component that helps the audience understand the character's situation. As a result, I understood that our emotions must be sharp and emphasized so that we can convey our expressions to the audience.