Character development

Today hasn't been very productive as no one from my groups have been in, this means I was unable to practice or block any scenes. I spent my day looking at my lines and looking at my characters for both The Tempest and Twelfth Night. My first interpretation of Miranda is that he is a very young woman who has been raised under male influence as shown through the lines "no woman's face remember" and "nor have I seen more that I may call men than you" this shows that she isn't used to female energy and I think this means she would have a boisterous aspect to her character and she wouldn't be very feminine unlike how the films and other plays portray her. I'm not saying she would sit with her legs open, fart and burp like a man, because her farther knows the conventions of women and would tell her what not to do as she grew into a woman. Also as Prospero was a duke before he was cast out he would be well held physically and would install a higher class way of being into his daughter Miranda. We are setting this extract in a 70's setting but I don't think that this will affect my character much as we have decided not to do an accent and the setting is still on a desolate island. But the costume will be different as she will be wearing vintage style clothes to fit the time period. This differed from the way Miranda would be traditionally dressed as she would be played by a man and would be wearing Shakespearean clothing which fits the character. The reason we have changed the time period is to give the play a different edge to the conventional way that it's usually done and to modernise it. I know it's not set in our modern day but due to movies and theatre today different eras have been normalised and recognised by a modern audience.  In Shakespearean times there was no creative and freedom of imagination when performing one of Shakespeare's plays as it was staging convention to perform it as it is written but now we can do what we want with it as long as we don't change the dialogue it's self. This gives us the freedom to change costume, voice and women playing women unlike in the past where this was just never done. Secondly when looking at my character Maria I tried to find a contrast between her and Miranda as I wanted to play something completely different. At first sight they seems very similar to me but after reading the play I saw the character in a completely different light as I discovered the comical and cynical side to my character. These aspects to Maria aren't really shown in my extract as it quite short but you do see her relationship with the clown and how she has a comical side. My character is one of the slaves under lady Olivia's rule and I interpreted her as quite a swath character who kisses up to her mistress whilst at the same time integrating herself into the naughtiness of the other characters around her. Due to us setting this play in a school setting my character fits perfectly into the swatty stereotype of modern day schools. As the clown enters what we have set as the classroom you start to see Maria loosen up and banter with Feste, this allows me as an actor to move physically from class swat who's up tight into a normal school girl being entertained by her class mates foolery back into a know it all trying to rationalise his jokes with her knowledge. When we first performed this for our teacher he noted that my character was not quite right yet as I hadn't picked up on all of Festes jokes and reacted to them so I sat and looked through the script picking out the "gags" and now I an a physical stimulus to the audience that something funny is happening even if they don't understand the joke it's self. All of the characters are archetypes of the modern school scene for example we have the class clown the school swat and the righteous teacher. These archetypes are very important in modernising our extract as it makes it more relevant with the school setting and it helps them make personal connections and interpretations of the characters due to past experiences in their lives.