Unit 23 - Developing voice for the actor

Tuesday 21^st November

In this session today I was performing my final rendition of my monologue.

Before I performed my monologue to my peers, we ran through a full voice production warmup to make sure that I was able to perform my monologue to the best of my ability and then also ready to participate in the rest of the session with the rest of the group. The warmup included the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise, diction exercises and tongue twisters as well as some jogging on the spot and side stretches to warm up other muscles in the body. I was then ready to perform my monologue.

The monologue that I was performing today is an abstract taken from the play ‘Hindle wakes’. The character that I am playing is called Fanny and she is talking to a lad who she has been spending some time with recently. The play is based in the 1940’s and is set in Lancashire. Although the piece is set in the 1940’s, it has got quite a contemporary feel to it because of the character and her personality. Here is a video of me performing the monologue:

Overall, I was really happy with how this performance went. I managed to remember all of the words and the order of the lines which was something that I struggled with for quite a while. I also managed to remember all of the corrections and pointers that Cara has been giving me over the past couple weeks in order to improve the piece. I spoke to her after the lesson and she gave me some feedback on how she felt the performance went. Firstly, she said that she could hear all of my lines. This was due to combination of factors such as diction and projection. I was able to apply the diction exercises which I have been practicing since I started college to the piece and these exercises enabled me to improve my diction and therefore lead to having a very clear delivery of the monologue. My projection also contributed to the clarity of the performance. The diaphragm kicks exercise has helped me to improve my projection as I used to be quite shy and quiet when practicing, but after I started to carry out different exercises such as the diaphragm kicks which helped to improve projection, I started to notice a difference in the clarity of my performances. The last factor which helped me to have a clear delivery was the pacing of the piece. This is something that I was really struggling with when rehearsing because I always used to throw away certain lines because I always said then too fast. However, during the final performance I remembered that I needed to maintain the pace so that each line could be heard clearly. Another piece of feedback that Cara gave me was that the body language that I used throughout the piece really showed the character. I also managed to stay in character throughout the whole piece. I think this was due to applying all of the vocal techniques such as diction, projection, pace, etc. right the way through the piece. Also, I really struggled with staying in character when I first started practicing this monologue because although I could do a Lancashire accent, I wasn’t very good at it. However, over time this has majorly improved and I believe that this really helped me get into character which then added to the performance as a whole. The last piece of feedback that I was given was that my intonation throughout the piece was very good and contributed to the piece nicely.

For the rest of the session we then worked on some bits and pieces for our Theatre in Education piece.

Towards the end of the session, I started to lead the group through a cool down. This was just a practice run of the cool down because I do not yet feel comfortable doing the final cool down ready for assessment. By having a practice run of the cool down means that my lecturer, Cara can give me some tips as to how I can improve my techniques.

To start the cool down I got the group to lie down on the floor so that the weight was distributed evenly throughout their skeleton. Then, once everyone was comfortable and relaxed, I got the group to carry out the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise. Then, slowly the group started to stand up. This then brought us to the end of the session. I also spoke to my teacher, Cara after the lesson about how the cool down went. I think that it went alright but I feel like there is room for improvement. She agreed with this and then gave me some comments and ideas as to how I could improve this. Firstly, when the group is led on the floor, talk them through relaxing each part of the body. This way it is more guaranteed that everyone will relax as much as they can. Secondly, instead of clicking the beats to indicate when the group needs to breathe in, out or hold, I should tap my leg gently instead because this will make a softer sound and will therefore be more relaxing. Thirdly, I should leave some time after the breathing exercise for the group to lay still so that they can relax just like they did before the breathing exercise. Lastly, when the group comes to standing back up, get them to firstly sit up and then stand. This way it’s much more relaxing and will decrease the risk of anyone fainting because they have stood up too quickly.