Hot-seating involves questioning a character to elicit responses that develop the character and provide more information about them. It can involve other characters questioning the character being hot-seated or an audience doing the questioning. The character being questioned must respond authentically in their role by considering aspects like posture, eye contact, voice, and how much information they reveal. Hot-seating is useful for fleshing out characters and learning more details about them beyond what is directly stated.

1. Hot-seating
Hot-seating can happen as audience questioning a character, or if you like
you could have other characters hot-seating another character to make it
more interesting. You need to remember that the character being hot-
seated has to respond in role. For example, think about how they would sit
or stand, whether they would face the person questioning them, whether
they will make eye contact. You will also need to consider use of levels and
space in your staging of hot- seating. You need to think about the kind of
voice and language the character being hot- seated will use - how much
information are they willing to give?
Hot- seating is really useful for developing character, and telling us things
that we don’t already know about them. Remember, while some information
is given to us, you can create the character and the world that they live in!
Fill out the section below with hot-seating questions and answers for your
monologue character:
Q: What do you want to be/do when you’re older?
A: Well… I would really love to be on TV and be famous where everyone
adores me and appreciates the work I do for them but – but I can’t.
Q: Do you have any siblings?
A: Err, yeah I have a twin sister named Sonia.
Q: Why do you think your mother abuses you?
A: I .. I don’t know. I mean, I never did anything wrong to deserve it, at
least I don’t think I did. My mum has been really stressed and I guess she
was just trying to relieve it and it got kind of out of hand. I know she doesn’t
mean it. I’m sure my mum loves me.
Q: When did your mum start abusing you?
A: Well, it started a little while ago. When I was about three I think. I can
still remember the first time she... she hit me. I took her lipstick and drew on
the walls. I didn’t know any better. That was the first time and ever since
then, its continued.
Q: Don’t you think you should tell someone?
A: I’ve considered it before but … what if they put Sonia and I into care and
then we get separated. We are twins and we are meant to stay together. I
couldn’t do that to Sonia, I’m meant to protect her.