Creating characters for Harriet’s House (2012)
One of my favorite ways to begin a new play (or any new story) is by working with a set of exercises I learned from Canadian playwright and novelist Kent Stentson at the Prince Edward Island Conservatory playwriting workshop I attended in the summer of 2004. Kent is prolific playwright and his play, The Harps of God, won the 2001 Governor General’s Literary Award. For Kent, the writing of a new play or novel should always begin with character work since it is through the development of characters that playwrights find a story to tell. “Characters,” he says, “are the forces which deliver the playwright’s messages.”
The exercises I learned from Kent involve writing three narratives about a character on my mind. The first narrative is entitled “She” or “He” or “They” and is written in the third person. The second narrative is entitled “You” and is written in the second person. The third narrative is entitled “I” and is written in the first person.
I used Kent’s exercises to create the main characters in Harriet’s House: Harriet, Harriet’s adopted daughters Luisa and Ana, and Harriet’s youngest birth daughter Clare. I spent half an hour writing each of the narratives and didn’t stop writing until the half hour was up. Here is an excerpt from the third person narrative I wrote about Harriet. The narrative provided me with some important understandings about Harriet’s mothering experiences and her relationship with her adopted daughters Luisa and Ana.
“She”
She has had a rough time mothering. First, she had to convince her former husband Jonathon to consider adopting a baby from Colombia. Then she had to convince him that they should adopt two children. Two sisters, young girls. No longer babies. No longer even toddlers. Two little girls. Luisa and Ana. Age 10 and age 7… Ana was a delight. Luisa was difficult. Instead of being happy to give up the mothering of Ana to Harriet, Luisa was fiercely protective of her mothering role. Luisa had been Ana’s mother for the three years they had spent in the Colombian orphanage. Luisa and Ana’s birth mother brought them to the orphanage when Luisa was seven and Ana was four. The birth mother was poor. She was ill. And she couldn’t take care of them. Luisa had looked after Ana right from the beginning. She made sure that she had enough to eat, that she was clean, that she wasn’t teased by the other kids. She was her mother. For three years. Luisa couldn’t give up mothering just because Harriet and Jonathon came along and put them on a plane and took them to North America.
Slowly, Harriet learned to share the mothering with Luisa. She learned to let Luisa dress Ana in the morning even though this was a pleasure that she had anticipated and looked forward to from the day she had seen Ana’s picture in the Global Family newsletter that Anita put out. She was allowed to cook for the girls, allowed to clean their rooms, but helping Ana get dressed each morning was Luisa’s job. Shopping for clothes was a job that Harriet and Luisa shared. The three of them went to the mall together…
By the time Luisa was 11, she was going shopping by herself. Harriet would take both girls down to the mall, start shopping with Ana, letting Luisa go her own way. They would meet for lunch at the food court, then after lunch, Ana and Harriet would take Luisa back to the store that they had shopped at and show Luisa their choices. If there was anything that Luisa really didn’t like, they didn’t take it…Ana liked dressing like a jock. She was very athletic, played girls hockey and liked to wear t-shirts with collars or scooped necks and jeans that fit just right: not too snug and not too big. It wasn’t hard to shop for Ana. She usually found what she wanted at the GAP or Old Navy. And her choices were so non-descript that Luisa rarely needed to veto anything. They had learned over the years, Harriet and Ana, how to work with Luisa…letting Luisa choose her own clothes wasn’t a big deal. She missed the intimate mother-daughter conversations they could have had while shopping, the kinds she sometimes had with Ana once Luisa started shopping on her own. But Luisa didn’t seek intimacy from Harriet. They had a very complicated, negotiated relationship. And intimate wasn’t the word anyone would use to describe it. Friendly and affectionate at its best, heated and aggressive at its worst. Not exactly the way Harriet had imagined it would be like on the flight to Colombia she and Jonathon took when they went to pick up their new daughters and take them home.
Sometimes when I work with Kent’s exercises, a narrative I write for one character ends up providing me with information about another character. In the second person narrative I wrote about Harriet, I found out more about Luisa. Luisa is the character addressing Harriet as “you” in this next excerpt.
“You”
You try very hard. I know you do. And I’m grateful. I really am. I know I have grown up with privileges that I never would have had if you and Jonathon hadn’t adopted us and taken us here. But I don’t belong here anymore. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. You did the best you could. I did the best I could. But I don’t belong here. And I don’t want to belong here. I want to go back home. To Colombia. And as soon as I finish these last few courses, I’m gone. I know you will be disappointed. I know we are going to have a fight. I know you will yell. I know that I will yell, and I know that I will win the argument and that you’ll let me go … Ana rarely speaks to me in Spanish now. Even when I tell her to speak Spanish with me she won’t. I hate the sound of English coming from her mouth. I feel an ache for the Spanish she used to speak. When I get to Colombia, I won’t have to hear Ana speak English. I won’t have to hear anyone speak English if I don’t want to. You tried. You enrolled us in Spanish classes, though you never took any yourself. We went to Colombia night every year, fundraised for the orphanage. You didn’t try to make us forget where we came from. You tried to help us remember. And I remember. And I want to go back … You have tried to be a mother. But I never wanted another mother. I had one.
In this last narrative about Harriet, written from the first person, I found out how Harriet feels about coming out as a lesbian in mid-age.
“I”
I have a secret. A secret I’ve been keeping from everyone, including my daughters. It’s not like me to keep secrets. I believe in being as honest and direct as you can. But nevertheless I have a secret. A secret girlfriend. Me. A woman who’s been married for 13 years, divorced for three. Was I always attracted to women and never knew it? Is this something new? A reaction to being divorced? Does it matter? I’m happy. Really happy… The girls. I wonder what they’ll think … Most people come out to their parents. I’m coming out to my kids. Three teenage daughters. What will they say? And what will my friends say? What will Anita say? Anita will be surprised. Shocked, maybe. But I’m sure she’ll be supportive. We’ve been friends for years now. Eight years. You don’t cut someone off after eight years of friendship just because they’re gay…Surely no one cares if you’re gay anymore. I need to tell them. But how? How do you tell your daughters you’re gay? How do you answer their questions? If you’re so gay, why did you live with Dad for so many years? I don’t know. If you don’t know, then how do you know you’re gay? I just know. How? How do you know? I just know. I can feel it…
In Kent’s workshop, the writers all took turns reading aloud each of their character narratives and received feedback from Kent and each other. Kent asked us to provide four types of feedback on each of our narratives: a compliment; an image or phrase that stood out; a question that we had about the narrative and an urge we had in response to what we had heard in the narrative. I really liked Kent’s feedback process. When I hear a compliment about my work and hear about an image or phrase that stood out for others before hearing any other feedback, it keeps me open to the questions and urges that follow.
As you begin developing your own story, perhaps you will also find Kent’s “She/He/They”; “You” and “I” exercises helpful. And if you are writing among colleagues in a writing group, try reading out your character narratives so you can receive some feedback on what details of your narrative are standing out for others.
In my next post, I will share some of the beginning exercises and writing I completed to create to the story of Harriet’s House.
All the best,
Tara
References
Stentson, K. (2001). The Harps of God. Playwrights Press Canada.