Acting Advice: Building a Historically Accurate Character

Building a historically accurate character for theatre means researching far more than dates, costumes and major events: actors need to understand how history actually reached the person they are playing. Imagine we have been cast as a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl in Nottinghamshire in 1985. We could give her big hair, a Walkman, chewing gum and a vague enthusiasm for Duran Duran. Congratulations: You have created an 80s fancy-dress costume. How has living in Nottinghamshire in 1985 actually changed who this girl is?

Start with the facts. Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. The miners’ strike has recently ended. Unemployment is significant. Live Aid takes place that summer. AIDS is entering public consciousness. An actor should know these things for sure. The mistake comes when research ends there. A timeline tells us what happened around someone; character research asks how those events got under their skin.

So perhaps our schoolgirl’s father worked at a Nottinghamshire pit. Suddenly the miners’ strike stops being something you recite in a history exam. It may mean her family struggles financially. Her parents argued about money. Maybe she has learned not to ask her dad for £3 because he has learned to say no so aggressively. Historical fact has now become behaviour. Knowing how ordinary people complain about prices, talk about unemployment or plan Christmas tells you what history felt like before it becomes a documentary.

Popular culture deserves the same attention. Do not write “likes 80s music” in your character notebook and consider the matter closed. What does she actually listen to? Who introduced her to it? Perhaps she loves Wham!, while her mum plays Motown around the house (because parents do not suddenly materialise in the decade their children are born). People inherit cultural memory. Our character’s musical world might contain records from the 1960s, a sibling’s punk collection, Top of the Pops and whatever her friends insist is currently cool. Plus, they don't know which song will become a classic, so perhaps listen to more than just Club Tropicana and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

What television programme did everybody watch the previous evening? Who is the celebrity heartthrob on her bedroom wall?  What advert can she quote without thinking? Perhaps she loved the Levi's 501 laundrette advert; this is why she stole money from her mum's purse to buy the jeans she absolutely cannot be seen wearing in the house. Researching what your character watched gives them a vocabulary of jokes, impressions and assumptions they would never think of as “period detail”. To them, it is simply Tuesday.

Then look beyond entertainment. Read contemporary newspapers, magazines, novels and poetry. They show you what people were discussing, desiring and taking for granted. History books organise the past around events we now know mattered. Your character does not know that yet. Our girl in 1985 has no idea which bands will still be played forty years later. She does not know which politicians will dominate textbooks. She may consider her best friend kissing the boy she fancies vastly more important than whatever is happening in Westminster. Good. People living through history rarely spend their days correctly identifying the topics future historians will find significant.

For named historical figures, begin with the documentary skeleton: birth, family, addresses, education, occupation and relationships. Census records can establish who lived in a household, their ages, occupations, marital status and birthplaces; by 1911 they could also record details such as years of marriage and the number of children born and surviving. Discovering that a woman lost several children changes the emotional existence of her character, pregnancy and family life SO MUCH.

If your character is described simply as a 'Victorian servant', research other servants. Read diaries, court evidence, household manuals and autobiographies. What time did they wake? What could get them dismissed? Which entrance did they use? What did the work do to their body? That is the difference between researching a category and finding a person.

Oral history is especially valuable for recent periods because it preserves rhythm, humour and contradiction alongside information. The British Library’s National Life Stories project records extended biographical interviews about British work, culture and everyday experience. Listen to how people describe their lives: what they minimise, what still irritates them, which memories become stories and which subjects make them hesitate.

By now, our generic 1980s schoolgirl is becoming more useful. Her father’s work has made industrial politics personal. Her mum’s records mean she knows Motown songs older than she is. She watches the same television programmes as her school friends and repeats their jokes the following morning. She has learned that money is tight without anybody explicitly explaining the household finances. She may find national politics boring while absorbing and repeating her parents’ opinions without realising it.

If her father is unemployed, does she still ask him for money? If her household has one television, who controls what she watches? If phone calls are expensive, who is important enough to ring? If her parents experienced rationing as children, does that affect how they react when she wastes food?

Historical accuracy becomes dramatically useful when fact turns into behaviour. By the end of the process, you should know much more than what happened in your character’s lifetime. You should know what they thought was expensive, who they fancied, what embarrassed them, which news story bored them and which beliefs they inherited before they were old enough to question them. If all you know is the timeline, you have researched the history. When you know how that history has changed the person standing onstage, that’s when the past finally has character.