Gertrude
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If I were to get the role of Gertrude I would represent her as a power hungry, selfish and questionable person will little or no morals. I will explain how I would represent her like this, assuming I do get the roll of course, through her nature, motivations and her interactions with the other actors; also I will further explain how the audience will be invited to respond to Gertrude, by stage props, lighting and sounds. I will show how my representation will be activated by her costuming, physical movements, manner and also her tone.
Gertrudes nature will be manipulative, cunning and self-centered. She would appear to give sly smiles and would look at the roof or at the ground rather then directly at the person, when talking to someone, so the audience will think she is hiding things and not telling the full truth. She would be motivated by the power which she got from helping kill Hamlet Snr, and marrying Claudius, which she only did for the power. While interacting to the other characters she would have her arms crossed, make faces when people are not looking, play with her hair and basically fiddle with things, sort of like a typical school age, gum blowing, short skirt, high sock teenage school girl, kind of like you see in the American movies. An example of when I would use this is in the bedroom scene (Act Three, scene Four) when she is begging hamlet for mercy not to kill her because she knows that he knows that she was involved or knew about Claudius killing Hamlet Snr, when he was watching her she would be relentlessly crying (the whole deal balling, puffy red face, screaming – Everything), but when he turned away she would shrug her shoulders and make a quick tisk and sigh. This would allow the audience to see how fake and two faced she is because she is appearing like the grieving widow and apologetic but really behind his back she is careless about the pain and death that she has caused in her own family. Also when hamlet leaves the room dragging Poloniuss body she will fake cry for a few seconds until she can no longer hear hamlets footsteps then she will stop and grin, then go on with her business. Additionally in act 3 scene 2, “the murder of Gonzago” (the play inside the play Gertrude would look at the king in shock, and then look at hamlet, afraid that hamlet knows that she is involved with the murder. In this I would hope that the audience does not see a familiarity in characteristics between themselves and Gertrude so as that they dont feel compelled to take Gertrudes side and sympathize for her.
Her dress would look like this (pull out drawing), darker colours to show the audience that she has a darker personality, so they can pick that she is devious before she even talks. The dress would be sort of old school, like you see in the old western movies, poofy skirt with a fluffy top and a front tying bodice. The skirt would be this materiel, the top this materiel and the bodice