Initial Reaction to my Character: Eeyore

An original drawing of pooh bear and eeyore

A modern day drawing of my character, eeyore.

As part of an exercise, for our first script read through we each picked a character name from a hat and read that part. I  picked Eeyore and was instantly excited because growing up I loved the character, he was always my favorite animal out of the group. So when it came around to saying his lines I already had an idea as to how I wanted him to sound. I experimented with the depth of his voice and got a good reaction. After break we received our roles and I was so happy to be cast as Eeyore, it was literary my childhood dream to be him, so suddenly the project looked even more exciting and enjoyable to me. I was determined to make Eeyore believable,vibrant and engaging for the children to watch. I was nervous about portraying such a well known character and also trying to keep the energy up because this character is very gloomy and inwards, I didn't want it to become boring for the children. I'm still unsure how to physicalise Eeyore, because I want to keep the spirit of Eeyore alive but keep his body open. I will experiment during rehearsals and see which works best.

I researched a little more into my character and discovered that the author (A. A. Milne) wrote about the games his son played with his toys. There are speculations that each character in pooh bear represents a section of Christopher Milne's personality, Eeyore being the depressive, sadder side. The scene we are doing is from pooh corner, extracted from the chapter entitled pooh sticks. I read the story and watched a few episodes of winne the pooh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RpQSaNkDd0) and now feel as if I have a better understanding of my characters movements and vocals. I've decided to make Eeyore's voice low and slow but still energetic and occasionally changing pitch. I will continue to explore and develop my character throughout the rehearsals.