Once I had created the name ‘Super Boy’, I needed to discover what his ‘pain’ was and how he was going to hide it. From a very young age, I have always loved superheroes. I enjoyed seeing their powers and how they used them to fight the villains, their abilities were a part of their identity. You can’t think of swinging from webs without thinking of Spiderman. I became obsessed with watching weekly episodes of all superhero shows I could find, all just to see their powers and the introductions of new villains with new abilities.
Things changed when I got to my into my teens. I still loved watching the new powers, but as I matured (and along with me the stories I could view), I began to be more invested in the people underneath the masks. Batman was cool and scary, but it was Bruce Wayne’s inner demons that pushed him and that was fascinating to me. Much like Macbeth’s plans of betrayal or Woyzeck’s madness, these characters have two sides to them. One that they present to the world and another that consisted of who they truly were or soon becoming.
For ‘Super Boy’, I wanted to use a classic superhero mask, but further explore its use as a disguise. I wanted my mask to hide not only the hero’s identity but also symbolise a barrier to inner struggles and discomfort.
I recalled getting my face painted as a child, I remembered that I would always forget about the paint and always ended up itching/touching my face and smear the paint, it was a mess. In fact, still do this, having played The Wolf in Lincoln Drama Society’s Grimm Tales production, where I had to keep stopping myself from ruining my wolf make up.
Playing The Wolf cemented the idea that I could use facepaint in my piece. I decided to connect my personal memory/behavior to my Super Boy character. I wanted to paint the hero mask on to my face and at some point rub it off to reveal the character’s inner ‘pain’ from my initial ‘pain-t’ idea. However, this way as far as intended to go with connecting my personal life with my piece. I had already experienced incorporating my life into a role and piece of original writing and although it was eye-opening, I didn’t feel comfortable doing so with my solo piece. I applaud those that wanted to in my class, I think it was very brave of them, but personally, I didn’t want to tackle something as personal so directly. Instead, I decided to focus on ‘identity’, as it felt a more universal theme, every0ne at some point struggles with who they truly are and how they present themselves.
I began to play around with facepaint and came up with this:
It was very simple, which I liked, it made me feel like a character from ‘The Incredibles’ movie.
I always loved their design and how with one glance, you knew they were heroes.
I began to write and script and decided to use a narrator who could order me about. Narrators were often used in classic shows like 60s Batman cartoon. I recoreded myself reading the lines and used a satirical nasally American accent, like the voice the cartoons used. I made the narrator give orders and behave like a dictator, he would tell the audience who and what Super Boy was, even if Super Boy disagreed. The Narrator served as the opressive force for Super Boy’s true self to rebel against.
I set myself the challenge of using minimal set and I also wanted to use the length of my stage to symbolise time. Much like how an episode of my a superhero cartoon, I wanted to story to build. I would first appear at the end of the room, furthest away from my audience, making it hard to see the details of my outfit, I wanted to start off as the generic symbol of a hero. Whilst starting of with this and then gradually getting closer to the audience, Super Boy got nearly to the end of the ‘episode’, the distance from the back of the room to the front was the ‘runtime’. During the piece, as he went towards the audiece he would reveal more and more of his distaste of being expected to be the ‘hero’, when in reality he hated it. He would then demomstrate this by rubbing off his mask, taking charge and eventually calling for help himself.