VOICE!!!

Today’s class saw us focusing on The Voice.

How we speak and how our voices are unique as well as how we can create character.

We considered some main points when it came to Vocals,

Relaxation – basically what it says! To get a good voice out you have to be relaxed; tense yourself and you try to speak and what you’re saying comes out horribly forced. Relax and words flow freer, you can make more use of your vocal range. We reserved brits tend to use less and less of our vocal range because our language isn’t as expressive as say Latin languages. In order to fully use your voice you must therefore let go of inhibitions!

Breathing – that important thing that your body does; the correct use of breath means you can speak fluently and coherently. Just recognising when you need to breath is a step in the right direction to good vocal skills. Being aware of how much body you use to breath tunes you in to your whole respiratory system, including your vocal chords.

Tone and Resonance – Tone is literally the sound you are making. A person can usually have about 2/3 octaves in their voice. An opera singer or generally someone who exercises their voice regularly can have 4 octaves! The more you exercise your voice, just as you would practice a musical instrument, the more tones and twiddlie bits you can do with it! It was great fun to be made increasingly aware of how we made sounds, whether that be an “mmmmm” sound with the front of our mouths or an “innnng” sound through our nasal cavaties!

We then picked up some scripts, an adaptation of an excerpt from a Terry Johnson play, “Dead Funny”, the scene being “Tonight Matthew…” We had to work in pairs, playing two characters discussing one’s planned activities for that Sunday night, specifically a “one night only” Take That gig in Liverpool.

We all interpreted it at first as the first character, Sam, being hugely overexcited about going to see the performance, with the second character, Alex, being less than impressed at Sam’s attitude.

Alex: you got a ticket?

Sam: I’ve got twelve!

Alex: handy, that way when you fall asleep you’ll have something to stretch across.

We then were instructed to work on developing the characters. Actors when given a script and a character would consider a huge number of things about said character,

Where do they live?

How old are they?

What do they do?

What do they like?

What’s their opinion of other characters?

I was playing Alex and so came up with a story that he and Sam were 30 something flatmates; a sweet and sour pair, with Alex being the slightly more sour one. He is a transvestite and so is self-conscious and so is rather defensive and serious. He takes his job at the bar he works at very seriously. Rather than being the camp stereotype, he’s highly cultured and so wouldn’t tolerate Take That, is a bit of meglamaniac and takes the fact he’s slightly older than Sam as a signal that he is by proxy, more mature and intelligent than Sam!

Sam meanwhile was a blogger and critic who is much more relaxed than Alex.

We then redid our performance and the characters suddenly were much more alive; it was fab to be able to perform them with so much added detail.

It was only later that it was pointed out the scene could be read the other way, that Sam was mortified at having to go to a gig and Alex was consoling him. I DID NOT EVEN THINK OF THIS POSSIBILITY! So, we turned the performance on it’s head and it was obvious the characters and the way we played them shifted as we saw a different side to them; sadness and sympathy.

Next week we’ll be combining what we learnt about Tableaux and portraying a story through a picture, with portraying a character through voice. Tune in next time for the next update!