Behind My Forehead - Playing Steph

In Chemistry, I play Steph, a character who is suffering from Major Depressive Disorder. She has attempted suicide multiple times, practices self harm, has been prescribed a laundry list of anti-depressants, has been in and out of psych wards, group therapy, psychiatry and psychology offices alike. However, she refers to these aspects of her life with razor sharp wit and a bald honesty. 

As an actor, I can research these topics until my finger tips are numb. Though I can learn to define the chemical breakdown of Serotonin (I'm pretty sure that's absolutely something Steph would do, being a young lady obsessed with the chemistry that has made her this way), this kind of research can only get me so far in understanding the complexity of a character's dreams, hopes, and fears.

So I turn to visual research. When I work on a show, I often create a Pinterest board as a way to understand the subconscious mind of a character, as well as filling in some visual gaps in the physical world they live in. In this board, a few key images and ideas are repeating. 

• I became fixated on the back, what someone's naked back looks like. There is a vulnerability which Steph's boyfriend, Jamie, exposes through revealing his back to her. 

• I wanted to find an image that expressed that aspect of chemistry that is a collision, an explosive force, bright and colorful, like the initial spark between Steph and Jamie. I found images of Holi, a traditional Indian festival of colorful powders being thrown. 

• One of the most prevalent images in Chemistry is this idea of a giant ocean hovering above the ceiling. The way Steph tries to collapse the ceiling with her mind is passive, and reminds me of Ophelia allowing her garment to drag her to the bottom of the brook. 

But the point of my Pinterest page has less to do with explaining the thoughts and feelings of the character I play, but rather to do with getting at something deeper that maybe cannot be explained by the text of the script or the work in rehearsal. It simply allows for more complexity by adding a layer of research that lives somewhere in the back of my mind as a picture. Because people don't tend to dream in words and phrases, they don't have objectives that are sentences "I want to kiss him," they simply see the image, or little movie, running in their mind, that feeling of kissing someone.

To get an idea of what's going on behind her forehead, take a look at Steph's page here...

https://www.pinterest.com/loestar/chemistry-the-play/

(Note: I did not write the captions beneath the images)

- Laurie Benning Roberts