Triple - Voice and the Actor - Blog 4 - 29/06/17

Now that I've optimised my voice through a vocal routine, I've decided to put my more dynamic voice to work and play two very different characters and effectively use my voice to display these differences.

The two characters I've chosen are Lou from Dennis Kelly's "DNA" and Deputy Governor Danforth from Arthur Miller's "The Crucible." It's easy to tell the difference between these characters simply from the difference in plays; DNA was published in 2008 while The Crucible was first performed in 1953. Also DNA is a comedy while The Crucible is a tense serious play.

In order to present these character effectively in voice and other aspects, I needed to research them so I had a better understanding of them. Below is my research:

(Note: Lou is also very sarcastic and can be quite mouthy at times but knows his place when someone reminds him)

Below are the vocal qualities I'll apply to each character:

Danforth: Deep voice, sharp consonants, confident, assertive, strong, superior, slow spoken unless angry, well spoken (great articulation)

Lou: Slightly high voice, softly spoken, sarcastic, often weak, speaks fast when panicked, common (not great articulation).

Single - Site Specific - Blog 15 - 26/06/17

Risk assessment:

Tripping over steps/doorways:

This risk is very likely as there are lips on the doorways and some steps are very disproportionate compared to others. Despite tripping over is usually quite a minor risk in terms of severity, we will put tape down across the steps and doorways to make it clear that they are there.

Event of a fire:
The likelihood of a fire breaking out is relatively low as we're not using anything flammable but in the event of a fire, we would follow the church's procedure for fire safety as the results of the fire could end up catastrophic.

Tripping over uneven terrain:
Although there isn't much we can do to stop the audience falling over on uneven ground, we will warn everyone before the performance begins so all are aware of the risk.

Triple - Voice and the Actor - Blog 3 -

Two weeks ago, I created a vocal exercise routine so that I could improve my voice as an actor. The three areas I wanted to train were Articulation, Pitch and Tone. Below is my progress in the three:

Articulation: Where I used to have quite a prominent lisp, I have thoroughly improved and am able to speak more clearly. Where before it was a bit difficult to understand some things I said, I feel that I'm more understandable when I speak.

Pitch: I was very surprised with how different I sound after working on my pitch as I sound like a different person. By just simply breathing from my diaphragm, my voice is a lot deeper than usual.

Tone: From practising using my tone effectively, I am a lot more natural putting emotion into my voice. Where before I would get the meanings of lines wrong, I've improved a lot more in that respect.

Double - TIE - Blog 10 - 21/06/17

Analyse and justify your ideas for a Theatre in Education performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that meets the needs of your target audience.

What is “Theatre in Education”? Theatre in Education is a process in which it includes all the interactive theatre/drama practices that help aid the educational process. (tie.com) TIE isn’t just an education of various theatre techniques but also passes on knowledge by educating a target audience on a specific place, person, book or theme such as betrayal or loneliness. This let’s an audience look on their topic in a more receiving fashion and is laid out in a simple format which is easy to understand. Key Stage 3 students often study a text, such as Shakespeare, and are tasked with exploring difficult themes and characters. Watching TIE production of said Shakespearean or alternate text would allow them to have a better understanding every aspect due to the performance having a simplified plot, obvious costumes to depict a character’s status within the play, relevant set/lighting to fully demonstrate where a scene is set, and almost melodramatic characters to full express each characters’ emotions, objectives and motives every time they’re on stage.

The most important thing for every performance is safety; the audience’s safety is prioritised above everything else. Our first precaution that came to mind instantly was the event of a fire. If the fire alarm in the building were to go off, no matter what point we are at during the performance, we will stop, direct the audience to the fire exit and guide them to the fire assembly point which will be announced before the performance. Informing the audience of the location of the fire assembly point will make matters a great deal easier if it comes to evacuating the building. We will also warn to remain calm in the event of a fire alarm; although, being KS3 students, they’d be used to process of fire drills, some individuals may choose to overreact and cause a ruckus. To combat this, before the performance when informing about fire safety, we will make it clear to remain calm if the event were to be a reality.

To avoid a fire happening, all our lighting equipment will be hung up high away from students and curtains, as opposed to having the lights on the floor, beneath seats. This keeps the equipment out of reach of students who want to tamper and keeping the lights away from the curtains avoids the risk of a fire. Finally, we will ensure that the audience is seated far away enough from any lifts/physical theatre as a lift gone wrong could result in a cast member falling into the audience.

The key to Theatre in Education is to keep everything bare bones simple to so that the audience can really soak in the plot of the play to be able to reference back to events, such as the duel. We have decided to do this with our set as this is not something we want our audience focusing on too much. Although, having extravagant set would be very entertaining for the audience, our key aim is to educate rather than entertain and I feel that the audience would end up being distracted by the set. Our plan for representing the different locations (e.g. the woods, Athens, the fairy world) is to use lighting. Lighting is a lot subtler but still very clear at displaying the different areas. Also, as we are only a small company, having extravagant set would either be too expensive or very time consuming, while lighting wouldn’t take long to set and we already own the equipment so there would be hire costs to consider.

With costume, we would ideally want to have full costumes as this would fully express who our characters are. However, due to having a small cast, we are multi-rolling which leaves us minimal time to get changed. Getting changed from one extravagant costume to another would take a minute or two but at times, we have literally seconds before we re-enter as a different character. Our solution to this is being fully dressed in black joggers and t-shirts and having representational costume for each of our characters to show which character. 

This is not only easier for us as actors but also allows the audience to think deeper into our characters based on the little representational costume we have. They would wonder, out of all items of clothing they could’ve chosen from, why is Egeus wearing a waistcoat? A performance which has audience’s asking questions like this not only educate but encourage independent ideas being implemented into their knowledge. A lot of KS4 English work asks students to implement their own opinion into their answer and this ties in extremely well with our minimal costume plans; does the waistcoat represent a wise character or an upper-class character?

Something that changed our outlook on costume was our decision to set our story in a more modern era. With theatre becoming very revolutionary with its alternative takes on classical pieces, applying the same theory to our version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is something which will appeal to our target audience a lot more. Our original idea was to set our production within a school and separate each three groups (The Fairies, The Mechanicals, and The Lovers and Royals) as different groups within a school. The Mechanicals would be become the drama kids with Bottom being the egotistical actor and Quince the control freak etc. The Fairies could’ve been a group of Caretakers who are in the background of all the action and The Lovers could be the more popular kids with Egeus being a parent asking Theseus, the headteacher, to forbid Lysander and Hermia’s relationship. Although this idea could’ve been very fun to work with and could allow the audience to engage more with the characters due to their many similarities, we felt this idea may lead to the audience taking the play a lot less seriously as such mature themes were being displayed by immature characters. Also, we couldn’t think of any logical way that the Caretaker Fairies would interfere with the lovers without the magical herb.

The idea we went with resulted in a modernisation of the plot but with each of the three groups being from different backgrounds. We changed the fairies to “chavs” while keeping the magical herb element as at this point we felt that this is a detail we don’t need to focus too much on and neither will the audience. We chose to have them as chavs as this is a group of people that our audience will not only find comical but they’ll understand them too. The Mechanicals have been changed to a group of actors in an amateur drama company, which we feel works very well and is similar to our previous idea of the drama class which was our favourite part of that pathway. The idea of the mechanicals being dramatists works extremely well with their bold and melodramatic personalities and will entertain the audience while keeping them focused on the story. Finally, the Lovers and Royals are to be upper-middle-class citizens whom all are very well kept and spoken apart from Lysander and Hermia; two rebellious teens who are sick of being treated like kids and want to do what they want. Having the pair as an insubordinate couple makes the relationship a lot more passionate rather than the classic soppy lovers which everyone has seen countless times. Demetrius is a “does as he’s told” character and will do anything to get into the good books of Egeus which is why Egeus thinks so highly of him and wishes he marries his daughter. Helena however, is a bit rougher than the rest especially in her looks which is why Demetrius wishes to be rid of her. Still considered upper-middle-class due to her family, her looks don’t fair her so well and steps her down a peg from the other lovers. This group of young lovers works extremely well for our target audience as not only are they now being played closer to their age, but the way they’re being portrayed is a lot more down to earth and easier for them to understand.


Based on these character choices, we decided that our costumes would also be modern as it’s something that the audience can connect with better. We’d keep to all blacks with representative costume as this is easier for our quick changes. The “Chav Fairies” would all wear some sort of hoody or bag to show their character while, for The Mechanicals, we’d have them lots of different outfits to show how different they are from one another; this highlights the many different personalities within the group. For the Royals and Demetrius, waistcoats and other smart wear would be appropriate, whereas for Hermia and Lysander, a rebellious, punky item of clothing like a cap or a flannel shirt would be well suited. Helena would wear some sort of ugly dress over the top of her clothes to highlight she isn’t particularly good-looking. These costumes do very well to highlight our characters and this would allow students to draw a lot of key themes from them (for example, Helena’s poor dress sense makes it clear she is not pretty at all.)

Double - TIE - Blog 9 - 14/06/17

Today, we looked over the duel scene between Lysander and Demetrius and leads on to the argument between Hermia and Helena.

We explored ways to make this scene entertaining and engage our target audience. We originally thought about keeping it to a real duel but instead of with swords, they battle with comical objects such as cucumbers or brooms. As funny as this would be, we felt it wouldn't work as we'd need to already have these objects on us and the audience would be confused as to why we were holding vegetables during the tenser dialogue scenes. We don't want the focus to be on the silly weapons until it gets to the actual duel.

Instead, we made the duel more slapstick and had Demetrius begin with a low blow followed by Lysander going for a quick punch. This then goes into a pathetic, childish grapple which the girls are really embarrassed about. Having these two manly contenders for Hermia's heart (or Helena's at this point in the play) result to slapstick headlocks is very comical and we felt that the audience would find this very funny. Oppositely, when Hermia and Helena fight a little later, they engage a lot more violently than Lysander and Demetrius did. Hermia begins viciously grabbing Helena's hair then jumps on her back. She later charges at Helena twice like a bull. We felt that these violent tendencies are very good for Hermia as it matches her anarchic attitude we've given to her and Lysander.

We then carried on through the script just before the Titania and Bottom's scene. For the section where Puck gathers all of the lovers, we have him disguised as a tree with branches in his hands and when he speaks to a lover as another character (e.g. talking to Lysander as Demetrius), James mouths the lines while the actor offstage will actually say them. We think that the audience will think this is really clever and appreciate the skill needed to lip sync.

Single - Site Specific - Blog 14 - 15/06/17

As we are no longer able to perform at Temple Manor, we have had to adapt our performance to fit to a different location but as we picked such a dynamic original location, our ideas are easily transferable. The location we went for was Saint Margarets Church, Rainham and we felt this worked effectively with the Puritan society that The Crucible is set in. Below are photos of the venue and ideas on where scenes will take place:

Scene 2

Scene 1

Scene 3

Scene 4 (plus the latter two movement pieces)

Opening Movement scene

Triple - Voice and the Actor - Blog 2 - 08/06/17

For my vocal routine, I wanted to focus on my articulation, pitch and tone as these are the three parts of vocal technique I needed to work on. Below is my vocal routine which I will perform once a day for the next 2 weeks:

Articulation:

The EET/EETS/EES exercise (http://www.wikihow.com):
Separate your teeth slightly, and press the sides of your tongue against your upper back molars (the teeth in the back top of your mouth). Smile, and try to say "EET" and keep the back of your tongue in this shape while the tip of your tongue rises to make the final "T" sound. If the back of your tongue falls when this happens, keep practicing until you can say "EET" with your tongue in this position.

Once you can say "EET" with your tongue in the right position, say it again while holding the "T" sound. Leave the tip of your tongue up there while you say "T-T-T-T-T-T." The flow of air past your tongue tip can turn this sound into an "S." Keep practicing this exercise until you can get an "EEETS" sound, then an "EES" sound.

Tone:

Practise makes perfect:
Take simple words and say them with different emotions in mind. This will naturally change the tone of how you say each word. Step it up by moving on to short sentences and longer sentences. To make things extra tricky, try saying words/sentences in an opposite emotion (e.g. say "That's a really nice Sandra" in a scared tone. Or "I really don't like you Lucas" in a happy tone.)

Pitch:

Breathing and speaking through diaphragm (http://www.wikihow.com):
Breathing from your diaphragm as opposed to your chest will make your voice both more powerful and deeper. When you breathe, your stomach should rise, and your chest and shoulders should remain still. These are full, diaphragm breaths.

You want your breath to come from your diaphragm, and go out through the part of your face you identified in step one. Practice this often, saying anything you like, but focusing on these two parts of your body. You will notice that you can get more power in your voice with less vocal strain, resulting in a louder, deeper voice.

Double - TIE - Blog 8 - 07/06/17

Today we spent our lesson looking at costume ideas for our characters. We recorded all of our ideas down on the mindmap and filmed part of the discussion. Below is the mindmap with a tracking of our thought process and the recording of our discussion:

Full costume? - too expensive and not enough time to get changed - if we had a bigger cast and budget then it could possibly have worked.

Moschino cardboard clothing at Milan Fashion Week - flat costumes which are easy to take off - not very easy to move
Shirts and trousers with representational props - effective at displaying characters while still looking authentic - not very easy for movement.
Perform in own clothes - very true to the style of Shakespearean actors who wore their own clothes in performances - not suitable for a performance at all and doesn't distinguish our characters apart from each other.
All blacks - no need to get changed - easier to move in than full costume - not very good at portraying our characters/relies entirely on our characterisation to differentiate our characters

Blacks with minimal representative costume - ideal for multi-roling - not bad for movement - not much change needed for each character (e.g. hat taken off, jacket put on)

When/where are we going to set it? - What will they wear based on this?
Set it in modern day? - in school (the lovers being students, Theseus and co would be teachers etc, The Mechanicals being the drama kids, the fairies being caretakers - doesn't suit the story at all.

Set in a timeless era but characters wear clothes based on their type of character in the era:

Fairies as New York gangsters? - literally in a different world to the rest of the characters - we tried a scene but felt that the accent wasn't for everyone and we needed to make it as convincing as possible - Fairies as "chavs"? - makes the very different to the rest of the cast and provides a lot of comedy (classical words being pronounced very commonly) - this worked well when we ran a scene.

The Royals and Lovers all being very upper class but Lysander and Hermia being dressed more rebelliously to show how anarchic their relationship is in the eyes of Egeus - Royals dressed in waistcoats etc - Demetrius in a smart blazer or more youthful waistcoat - Lysander and Hermia dressed down in a flannel shirt/hoodie but still well spoken to show they're still upper class (unlike the Fairies)

The Mechanicals all villagers? - tides in well with Quince's longing to perform to the Duke - possibly have them as a random group of characters from all corners of the UK/world - didn't have time to experiment with this but will give it a go next lesson

Triple - Voice and the Actor - Blog 1 - 01/06/17

Today I began writing my skills audit for my voice. As an Actor, opportunities for employment will increase as I hone my skills and work on aspects of my voice which need improving. In order to improve these skills, I need to identify them. Below is my detailed Voice Audit which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of different parts of my voice:

Technique (tone; pace; pitch; pause; projection; inflection; modulation; articulation; dynamics; accent):

With my tone, I believe at times, my tone doesn't always match the way my character would say their lines. For example, if my character is attempting to be very sarcastic, I may misread this and take it quite literally. This then spoils the effect of the scene. Work is needed

I feel that my pace is always very well used, with intense, excited lines being read fast and suspenseful, well-thought lines being read slowly. No work needed

My voice is naturally quite high pitched so this means when I play a more mature role, I would need to lower my voice intentionally which is sometimes uncomfortable. Work is needed

I feel my use of pauses is very effective and always gives the right effect every scene. After my work on Harold Pinter, my use of pauses is always impactful on different types of scenes. No work needed

I feel over my time as an actor, I have developed a much better stage voice which includes my projection. Being able to project your voice effectively is an important skill for acting, especially theatre acting. From being quite quiet in an average size room to being easily heard in a hall, I believe my projection isn't an issue at all. No work needed

My inflection is usually very well used, emphasising important words in sentence to show the motives of my character. No work needed

I feel that my articulation needs a LOT of work and this is due to my lisp. Although it's not that difficult to understand what I'm saying, it's still not ideal. This is probably biggest hurdle. Work is needed

Accents aren't my strong point but I am capable of a few including Western American, Cockney/Chav and Northern England. However, having accents under your belt is good, they're essential when pursuing a career in the arts as you'd focus on a specific accent for a role, not just in general. No work needed

For my vocal routine, I want to work on these qualities of my voice starting with the most important:

• Articulation
• Pitch
• Tone