It´s all business – Building my character

The play was planned and everybody knew how their character would be. I was totally lost, my mind was empty. I didn´t know what to represent or characterize. However, I received some advice and the idea of being the man who charges the rent arose. I wasn’t totally convinced. Talking with my IB partners, we decided that my character could be the son of the charger, and he always goes to the market to charge the rent, but the guys of the DVD store instead of paying him the rent, they give him porn movies so that he cannot charge them any income.

This idea was really cool. I liked it from the first moment but I didn´t have a character to represent. I was a little it worried because I could see that everybody had a character and I was the only one without one. However, I had an idea. I thought of my Tae Kwon Do teacher and I said that maybe I could be a Japanese charger of the rent. That was a great idea. So I started to work on the Japanese guys. I started to watch videos like Heroes and especially focus on Hiro Nakamura, or the MTV show, I survived to a Japanese challenge. This helped me a lot to build my character. Also when I went to practice Tae Kwon Do, I also observed every movement of my teacher and how did he talk.

There was a time when I wanted to quit; I wanted to change my character because I didn’t like the idea of being a Japanese man. The idea that people had was to be typical Japanese, without movements, calm and serious, and I wanted to be a funny character. Off course I was confused and disgusted.

When I was going to bed one of these stressful days I imagined my character, but not the one that some of my classmates wanted, I imagined a combination of both, a funny one and a calm one. In some parts my character could be calm and serious and in other parts it could be very funny. I worked on this idea until I finally found a way to represent my Japanese character.

Mr. Kawabata Jr. is the son of the man who charges the rent. But Mr. Flash and Captain, the ones of the DVD stand, instead of paying this boy with real money, they convinced him to pay him with porn movies. So Mr. Kawabata Jr. has a secret: he doesn´t receive money for the rent.

My character is kind of nervous because he does not want the other people to know about his secret of the porn movies. If someone discovers, they could call his dad and that's it, end of the job. This kind of movies are like a vice for him, he can't say no to them.