Further research

For this research task I have chosen the topic of status and body language which could branch out
into others areas like how it affects people’s behavior and how actors portray this type of character. I
have chosen this topic because for my scratch piece because I play the character of a matron. This
character is usually at a high power and very arrogant. When researching id love to explore how this
character would act if they had no power and were just amongst the normal working class. I feel like
this research will also not just be useful to myself but also to the rest of my group because my group
will then have a clear understanding of how to react to my character and I will also have a clear
understanding of how I should portray it. I feel like the research will help me develop my character
even further and will improve my performance throughout the rehearsal process and on the night.

Research

Men and status - Globally status is something that we think about all the time but we pretend it
doesn’t matter so we don’t seem like a dick. Yet there’s no escaping status. We’re hardwired to be
aware of it, to monitor it, to seek it, and to feel pained when forced to surrender it. Neurons fire and
hormones are released whenever we lose or gain status. It’s an involuntary process that we share
with our caveman ancestors as well as every other mammal in the animal kingdom. Its automatically
Implanted In our body because for many years high status and power was the key to living a luxury
and survivable life. Especially in the Victorian period, gaining and maintaining a status was extremely
important for their reputation and image in society. In the past wealthy women who were married to
rich men often had a respectable value and had some power. This would of have only been the case
if their husband owned or ran institutions. To this day many women who now run institutions often
aren’t the nicest of people and generally don’t care because they think they are more important than
everyone else. My character has this personality with a bit of vulnerability at the end of the piece
because this allows for character development and it also lets the audience focus more on the two
main characters who the piece is focused on. Differently to women Status has always been
particularly important for men. Biologists have long observed that males across species (including
our own) are much more sensitive to “status defeats” and have a much stronger drive to attain status
than females. Within humans, a man’s drive for status is woven into nearly every facet of masculinity.
However in the piece we are reversing the roles so that the men are one of the lowest ranking when
it comes to the hierarchy in our performance. This is interesting because in our modern culture,
vestiges of this idea of manhood-as-earned-status can be found in exhortations to “Man up!” or “Be
a man!” Despite a half-century-old attempt to root maleness exclusively in biology and/or culture
rather than behaviour, when a male is told to “be a man” about something, he knows exactly what it
means; and if it’s directed at him by his peers, it especially stings because they’re questioning his
status — questioning whether he’s a man among men. So in our piece we would like to show the
male wardens emotions and vulnerability instead of this character being stereotypical. We have done
this because it opens up a world for the audience to explore and realise men have the same
emotions as everybody else and they shouldn’t be told to “man up”.

So what is status and which type of status has my character got? The most basic definition of status is
this: Status is one’s rank in a group of people. Ascribed status is the status one has because of birth
or a role they take on later in life. For my character she would have status because of birth. The class
you’re born into, your race, and your sex comes with status built into it. So for example, if you’re a
white female born into an influential and rich family in England, you’re going to a have more inborn
status than if you’re a colored woman born to a poor family in the South.
The next part of my next part of research is how does status affect ones behavior? Status reflects
whether other people hold you in high esteem. People with high status are admired by others. In
order to maintain your status in a social group, it is important to pay attention to what other people
think and do. As a result, people who have high status are likely to be attuned to the people around
them. Status and power have different influences on people’s behavior. Raw power makes people
less sensitive to the wants and needs of others. Presumably, power focuses people on the resources
they control rather than the people around them. In contrast, status increases people’s focus on
others. Status is based on other people’s opinions. As a result, maintaining status requires paying
attention to other people. The material conditions in which people grow up and live have a lasting
impact on their personal and social identities and that this influences both the way they think and
feel about their social environment and key aspects of their social behaviour. Relative to middle‐class
counterparts, lower/working‐class individuals are less likely to define themselves in terms of their
socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self‐concepts; they are also more
inclined to explain social events in situational terms, as a result of having a lower sense of personal
control. Working‐class people score higher on measures of empathy and are more likely to help
others in distress. The widely held view that working‐class individuals are more prejudiced towards
immigrants and ethnic minorities is shown to be a function of economic threat, in that highly
educated people also express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly
educated and therefore pose an economic threat. The fact that middle‐class norms of independence
prevail in universities and prestigious workplaces makes working‐class people less likely to apply for
positions in such institutions, less likely to be selected and less likely to stay if selected. In other
words, social class differences in identity, cognition, feelings, and behaviour make it less likely that
working‐class individuals can benefit from educational and occupational opportunities to improve
their material circumstances. In some cases some people with a high position in life may abuse their
power and come across arrogant. These sort of people have little patience with everyone around
them and could easily channel their anger into violence. This could be a common habit for these
people and are therefore desensitised to it because in their mind they are the most important
person in the room.

Discuss what new things you can take from your research to bring into the rehearsal room as a way
of developing your creative ideas

One thing I can take from my research is the fact that status is always thought about. This could be
brought into the rehearsal room to develop our creative ideas because it can develop our characters
further. For example, as my character is at the top of the hierarchy and has an extremely high status,
every single thing she does or says is thought about before actually doing the action. This is her way
of keeping her status, proving the point that everyone thinks about their status on the daily. This can
work for all the characters in my group as each one of them know their place making sure not to step
out of line and to also not decrease their worth. A second thing I can take from my research is that
men care about status a lot more than women usually tend to do. This could be brought into the
rehearsal room to develop our creative ideas because we can explore what it would be like if the
stereotypical roles were reversed. When seeing a play or a drama series, usually the boss, owner or
matron is a male and the female is of lower class. However in our piece we thought it would be a
creative decision to explore what would happened if we subverted these stereotypes and have the
female as the one in charge. I personally think this was a successful creative decision because it’s not
what the audience would expect and it shows the different viewpoints of the characters. A final thing
I can take from my research is that in a institutional setting people with a high status are usually
intimidating and other people often fear them. This could be brought into the rehearsal room to
develop our creative ideas because we would like to show how status affects people’s behavior. This
could be done through our characterization as my character is often desensitized to situation with
the patients and she doesn’t need to give instructions regularly. This could come across cold hearted
to the audience giving them a clear indication that my character isn’t very nice. However on the
other hand, AJ’s character is working class with a low status who has just started the knew job. This is
very clear in his character because he is terrified of the matron and doesn’t want to step out of line.

How will you explore these ideas in the practical space?

As a group we will explore these ideas in the practical space buy securing a script and while we write
the script we can think about our characters status and personality. Once we have a script secured
we can start adding in physical features to make our characters start to come to life as well as the
storyline. Additionally, when rehearsing our piece one of our practioners (Sophie) suggest that my
character starts on the balcony to make the power dynamic more visible and interesting for the
audience. Once the rehearsal process got more intense and we got to the point where we’d just
rehearse it over and over again we would make little tweaks so that more detail could be added. We
would also get the practioners to watch our piece for their feedback to see what worked and what
didn’t.

Status: What Is It? Why Does It Matter? | The Art of Manliness

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201606/power-status-and-perspective-
taking

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12251