CHARACTERISATION

My initial approach to forming Andy was based off of what i interpreted in the text and what i got from the directors vision for the play and a few personal notes. It was clear that Ben wanted this play to be bold, energetic, loud and vibrant, so i decided that any character choices be them physical or psychological i would push to the boundaries of naturalism breaching surrealism and create something all in all quite strange. I was told by the director that they wanted my fastow to be completely detached from the Fastow of the second half, that he should be awkward, weak and lacking common social skills and any sense of boundaries/personal space.

physicality/mannerisms

The text describes Fastow as "nervy and lupine" which probably informed my first physical approach to the character. I started off just walking around thinking of these words and slowly letting them manifest physically, going from neutral to exaggerated then back to neutral hitting intervals in-between. I brought this into rehearsals from an early stage and allowed myself to experiment with posture and movement qualities, figuring out what felt right for Andy.

Theres a sort of constant fidget to Fastow as he's always thinking of something new and this movement is the result of his body trying to keep up with his brain. This fidgeting is carried out mostly through his hands and fingers but is also evident in where his attention lies, it's more prominent when he's uncomfortable (anytime he's with other people and initially with skilling but this subsides as their scene unfolds). He's constantly thinking about how he's being perceived and balancing this with his nature as he knows it unsettles people and ironically his overt self-consciousness only draws more attention to his awkwardness.

His eyes are widened in nervous and energetic manner as if he doesn't link so that doesn't miss anything. It seems as though he's constantly hopped up on adrenaline, and pitifully trying to just "act natural".

His posture is poor, and he slouches due to numerous years of studying numbers at work to go home and study numbers some more and i imagine him wearing glasses for that exact reason. His stance is poor and he plants his feet together encouraging an instability that i wanted to communicate to the audience, we have to show them the vulnerable side to Fastow building pathos, it's almost as if the audience want to help and him which i think worked well based off of audience response post shows.

One of my favourite for fastow is his "unsettling grin" i took this concept of a grin and rather than making it unsettling and creepy as the rest of his physicality i made the decision to give this warmth making him a little more human and further pushing this aspect of vulnerability. I wasn't too confident on the success of this choice up until the first show but i ended up going for it and finding it being one of my most successful and distinctive character choices. From this i learnt the benefits of making bold decisions, sticking to them and them paying off. Although it may not always work, it's pretty satisfying when it does.

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Andy is s unable to pick up on social cues and consequently sets himself up as a target for bullying, this is where his story begins, two coworkers coerce Fastow into talking to the company vips simply for their entertainment and thus Skilling meets Fastow.

Influences

When i first started working on fastow i looked for inspiration for voice, movement etc. and i began looking at Elliot Anderson - played by Rami Malek from Mr Robot and Will Graham played by Hugh Dancy from Hannibal.

Both of these characters (like Fastow) are uniquely intelligent but held back by their ability to socialise. Hugh Dancys character this tightened jaw which creates a really interesting vocal quality evoking a sense of pain and self censorship, he wants to say the right things but is worried it will be misunderstood or misinterpreted. I tried to experiment this and it did inform my voice slightly but it just didn't quite work for the stage in terms of volume and enunciation. Like Fastow theres a sort of concealed darkness to Will Graham and he eventually his thoughts become his very own antagonist as Andys Raptors become his. We watch him and root for him to only then question him and consequently ourselves for supporting the bad guy.

On Mr Robot Rami Malek communicates to the audience through a thought track voice over, he uses a complex vocabulary in a monotonous way but in a way that he says is understood by the listener. I think where Fastow differs from Elliot is in his enthusiasm but from certain moments of desperation in Mr Robot i drew from Elliot's volatility. He appears to be weak and spineless but when needs be he can get his point across, Fastow prefers the pen but is ready with the swords when needs be. The thing that drew me to Mr Robot was its almost uncanny links to Enron in which Elliot works for a company called E-corp (nicknamed evil corp) and depicts high level corporate crime and immoral company decisions. Theres even a scene where the CEO of the company surprises one of the leads with the line "you know it's my birthday today". The tone of the show is definitely i strived for in Fastow's character as they almost dehumanise everything, Elliot's clear battle his mental health is something thats explored in Mr Robot but not so much in Enron. I therefore created the context that Andy Fastow has high functioning autism, explaining his social incapabilities and natural flair for mechanical things such as numbers and graphs.

Voice

I found the accent work came naturally but i did struggle to build character through voice, i had to project, maintain the accent and enunciate a complex vocabulary of technical business terms in long speeches and thought processes. The most helpful note on this was one given by my director near the end of the process which was to deliver it like the C.S.I. where they're figuring everything out suddenly and somehow making a loud of complex speech understandable. Seeing as i'd broken down the text and learnt to understand what it means, it was a big worry of mine that the audience would have no idea what i was saying at the pace i had to say it. I found a solution in that when it got quite heavily wordy i would have the objective of making Jeff understand using tactics such as over enunciation and varying pace to almost dumb it down for him and therefore, the audience. This did work but i feel that my comfortability with the text also helped a great deal as when i became more confident, it became easier to produce these chunks of texts however i had to be careful not to get lazy in terms of diction and fall into the trap of assuming that people know what i'm saying because i remember reading it for the first time and having no idea what was going on. I learnt the importance of regular vocal exercises, working my articulators and breath control when performing in an accent and how much of a difference it makes.