Unit 23 - Developing voice for the actor

Monday 30^th October

In todays session I was focusing on my 2 contrasting pieces which I have been learning and developing over the past few weeks.

To start the session, I carried out a voice production warmup. This included exercises such as stretches, breathing exercises, diction exercise and tongue twisters.

Moving on to the pieces, I firstly went through my poem as I know this piece quite well now and I am sound with the words. Now that I know all of the words, I am able to focus on the intonation, projection and diction within the poem. After going through this poem a few times we then moved onto the monologue. I am very close to being able to deliver my final rendition and I think that I will be able to do this within the next few weeks because I know all of the words and have had a good amount of time to work on other elements such as diction.

We then spent quite a lot of time working on the monologue because this needs a lot of work. It is a complete contrast to the poem because although I still have to work hard to complete the poem, I think that there are more elements to think about with the monologue and I am still not 100% with the text.

Once I had gone through the monologue a few times, my lecturer gave me some feedback. Here is what she said:

·     Currently, the second half of the monologue is a lot more believable than the first half. This is due to words in the monologue which are words from the dialect from the area of which the monologue is set such as ‘like’, ‘happen’ and ‘right’. Therefore, I need to work on the first half of the poem to make sure that the accent is carried throughout and doesn’t just start within the second half of the monologue.

·     Don’t rush the beginning. At the moment I am trying to get through all of the speech because I am still trying to remember the words. I think it will be easier to slow down the words once I am sound with all of the monologue.

·     I need to respond at the start of the piece because that’s how the monologue starts - Fanny (my character) reacts to Alan (another character) because he asks her if she loves him.

·     I need to make sure that all of the lines are clear within the piece and that none of them are thrown away. This relates back to ensuring that I keep a steady pace throughout but also being weary of my diction and projection as well.

·     The characterisation has come along very nicely and has progressed a lot since I first started practicing the piece. However, there still needs to be a little more work on characterisation as Fanny is a very strong minded person who sees herself as equal to everyone else around her. This character is coming across but needs to be slightly stronger. Her character is especially shown in the line ‘You were just someone to have a bit of fun with’.

·     Fold your arms on the line ‘Strikes me…’ to show defence (relating back to the last point of beginning to show characterisation a bit more).

·     At the point in the monologue ‘No…’ the pace needs to change here because it is a completely new thought.

·     The piece on a whole has to be more abrupt because this then matches with the character’s personality.

·     I have been starting to think about the pace and the comedic elements to the piece and this was evident in my practice this morning.

After this feedback, we then decided to work on the piece a bit more by adding in some movements. Here is a video of me practicing the piece:

The comments which I received this time were:

·     Once I started to add movements, I was able to get into the character more.

·     When carrying out some movement, I added in some sarcastic movements with the sarcastic part of the monologue.

·     Wearing a skirt helped with characterisation and beginning to feel like a mill worker

Later on in the day, I watched back the footage which we filmed in this morning’s session. Cara and I made a few notes from watching the practice:

·     I need to stop any extraneous movements. At the moment I am moving around quite a lot but the character wouldn’t really do this as she wants to get her point across. I need to keep still with my feet firmly on the ground until I do have a specific movement.

·     My character isn’t very lady like and at the moment I still have an element of lady likeness in the piece. This needs to disappear in order to portray the character to the best of my ability.

·     Some lines weren’t clear. These need to be addressed by the pace of delivery by taking it slower.

·     The walk on ‘My husband’ needs to be more deliberate as at the moment it is quite weak and not prominent.

·     Don’t be afraid to drop the h’s or sound a bit nasally as these are characteristics of the Lancashire accent (where the piece is set).

·     My best friend is from Lancashire and to help me with the accent, I have been listening and will continue to listen to her and her family’s accents.

·     Punctuate ‘Strikes me…’ with a stamp to show aggression.

·     Throughout the video I am too fidgety and there is a lot of movement from foot to foot. This is something that I need to work on.

·     The character has grown a lot since I first started learning the piece and is still growing now.

·     Intonation at the start of the piece is great.

·     My response at the start of the piece was derisory i.e. “I can’t believe he asked me if I love him”.

Throughout the next few weeks I will keep going over the piece and make sure that I am sound with the words. Hopefully I will then get to perform the final piece applying all of the techniques that I have learnt during the course.