Joe is one of the most challenging characters to portray for several reasons. Firstly, his ethnicity is a challenge because it differs significantly to that of the actor. Joe is a middle aged, black police officer who has returned to serve the estate in which he was raised. It is not just Joe’s ethnicity which poses a challenge for the actor but also his age and his social position, including the professional and personal relationships he shares with other characters in the play. This character description is more than daunting to a young, white, middle class student from the midlands.

What I felt most important about playing Joe is to avoid stereotyping. It was essential for the tone of the play that the entire company remained on the right side of this line in order to avoid creating undesired comedy through the creation of caricatures. In order to avoid stereotyping, it was important to be subtle and maintain ambiguity regarding his ethnicity, as I felt it was one of the less important features of his character profile. It was important to prioritise elements of Joe’s character in order of relevance to the narrative. In this way, Joe was reinvented in order to serve as a functional character in the play acting often as the voice of the audience, teasing out information from the guilty characters about their criminal activity.

With the play having been based on Roy Williams’ play Fallout, and a subsequent television adaptation, I took influence and reference from them both with regards to playing my character, seeking to find inspiration in mannerisms and physical stance, as well as the subtle ways in which the actor uses his voice, both dynamically and in tone. In this way I was able to take the traits that suited my portrayal of Joe and leave the more inappropriately authentic traits out.

Joe’s characterisation changed a couple of times throughout the process. This was largely due to the professional relationship he had with his colleague and superior, Emma. What is most interesting about these characters is their different approaches to the case, Emma taking a very systematic approach, noting down every detail she can find to find some sense in the something that is so nonsensical. Joe on the other hand prefers to take a practical approach; he is opportunistic and takes a great deal of initiative in his work. He is not always as respectful as he should be towards his superiors, largely I believe due to his frustration towards the miscommunications occurring between the authorities and those they serve. This relationship was interesting to develop as I wanted to find the line between being unconventional and being insubordinate. Initially, we tried having Joe being disrespectful to his superior officer by pushing in front of her through a doorway or giving her dirty looks, rolling his eyes at her etc in an attempt to show his contempt for her. Whilst this achieved a strong contrast between the two characters, we decided ultimately that it was too strong a contrast to be considered realistic and that sort of behaviour would have got him into trouble. Once we reined those behaviours in to an acceptable and realistic level, the complexities of the relationship were able to reveal themselves. The relationship became one of mutual respect, despite the obvious differences in personality and professional style. It was important for these characters to respect one another as the have a shared goal and need to work together and this comes through in Joe’s timidity and reluctance to take over from Emma in the presentation scene.

Joe had been drafted in to work on the case because of his familiarity with the area and the gang culture, having grown up on the estate himself. This position of importance affected the way that I portrayed him. For me, Joe would have a complacency about him having been called up for his skills and unique expertise and it is for this reason that he was able to bend the rules somewhat and get away with more than he would under any other circumstances. Although I wanted to achieve this air of complacency with his role, what was more important was his personal attachment to the case. Having been born and raised on the estate, I saw him as an older version of Kwame, an outstanding individual who had managed to break out from the vicious circle of crime and poverty and for this reason, felt that he had returned to make a difference. It was this personal relationship to the place and the people that fuelled his desperation, frustration and anger towards the failing system.