Vocal artistry is one of the most delicious
pleasures of acting. To feel the voice alive inside the body, to lend the voice
to passionately chosen words, to expand ourselves by voicing thoughts and
feelings greater than our own--these are central among the joys of the actor’s
work.
An actor’s overall vocal melody is also one
of his major contributions to a production. Every show requires collaboration
between the playwright, producer, director, designers, crews, staff and more.
In creating the "vocal score," the actor takes his place as a full-fledged
collaborator. The legendary director, Tyrone Guthrie, spoke inspiringly on this
point in a 1952 London lecture:
"Actors
invent the music of their parts to a very great extent. In an operatic score,
the composer’s intention is made extraordinarily clear. The rhythm, the
inflection, the loudness and softness, the pitch and the pace at which the idea
is conveyed, are all clearly defined in the score…. The actor has to find
nearly all those things for himself…. That is, in fact, very highly
creative." (Directors on Directing, pp. 248-9.)
Locally, the TBA General Auditions are
coming up in March, and the Bay Area is teeming with shows and projects that
feature an actor’s creative abilities. Actors are checking that their audition
pieces show them to their best advantages, and that they are bringing all of
their physical, emotional, aesthetic and intellectual skills to bear on what
they are going to show.
Actors also, of course, want to take note of
the vocal score of each piece they plan to present--what John Gielgud called
"the underlying musical score of a part." This is important, of
course, whether the piece is classical or contemporary. When asked to talk
about the basic requirements for a stage or film actor, Gielgud replied:
"Voice, of
course, I think is wildly important. And to have a good ear…I mean an ear for
tempo, for rhythm, for musical quality, and for being able to hear when they’ve
done one thing and to be able to change it and go on to another, you
know--variety…. With modern works I think you need more tipping, more variety,
more tone interest. You cannot sit the whole evening listening to someone
speaking in monosyllables in the same tone of voice…. You feel the actor is so
limited…. He doesn’t create anything." (Actors Talk About Acting,
p. 16.)
Taking Sir Gielgud’s remarks as a point of
departure, let us note some guidelines that enhance the vocal interest of your
acting work for auditions and performance, for all media.
1. "More Tipping"
The expressive voice is found at the
intersection of three basic components. The first is pitch, which refers to how
high or low the voice is; the second is pace, which refers to how fast or slow
the speech is; the third is volume, which means how loudly or softly one is
speaking.
In colloquial or everyday speech, we tend to
use all three of these components within a rather narrow range. The
conversational voice typically hovers around pitches in the middle of the
voice, at medium speed and loudness. When we feel extremes of emotion, though,
our voices move to the extremes of pitch, pace and volume. We also shift
quickly from one extreme to the other. Both drama and music express heightened
emotions, and are best served by voices that move freely into the heightened
uses of the instrument. This "free movement" is related to what
Gielgud called "tipping."
Sentences for practice:
1. How can you say that; I wasn’t even
there.
2. How come she gets to go and I don’t?
3. Honey, I’m home, just like I promised.
4. The circus is coming to town--that’s what
she said.
5. I don’t think they can ask you to do
that.
Ideas for experimenting with pitch: Say
each sentence in a moderate pitch range. Repeat the melody of the sentence
without using any words. Listen for the highest pitch in the melody of the
sentence and then make it higher, listen for the lowest pitch and then make it
lower. Speak the sentences on the new pitches. Repeat several times, working
the high and low points apart until each sentence moves through your entire
range.
Ideas for experimenting with pace and
volume: Say each sentence at a moderate pace and volume. Say each one again,
getting gradually faster, then gradually slower; then louder and softer. See
how the sentences change if you get slower and faster within each one, then louder
and softer. Make these changes gradually, then suddenly. Combine these with
your increased changes in pitch.
Notes: Watch that you are always
speaking on an exhale, not holding your breath. Make sure you are allowing
space between your side and back teeth, not holding the teeth together.
Follow-up: Listen to the intonation pattern
or melody of 10 sentences which you say, and then which other people say. Write
them down, creating notation you can use to remember what you heard. This is
excellent ear training and gives you a springboard for working with dramatic
language in the future.
2. "More Variety"
One way to create more variety in a piece is
to make sure you’re not overly emphasizing the text’s stress patterns, or
rhythmic patterns. To a large extent, the rhythms are created by the pattern of
words you are emphasizing from line to line. If you emphasize too many words,
you achieve what I call "The Sledgehammer Effect," which tires
listeners’ ears without helping them hear which ideas are the most important.
In Donald Spoto’s 1992 biography of Laurence Olivier, he writes that Olivier
was enormously influenced by a technique that John Barrymore used for creating
variety through rhythm.
"[Barrymore]
seemed to select a single word from each line for emphasis, and this he uttered
with a great ring of passion; the result was a rhythm of alternating stresses
and varied volume that kept the audience bound to him." (Laurence
Olivier: A Biography, p. 33.)
Ideas for experimenting: Select a
newspaper article. Read it in a monotone, without any emphasis. Read while
emphasizing each word. Read without any special emphasis; mark in pencil all
the words you are stressing. Erase any words you can de-emphasize and still
retain the meaning. Organize the remaining stresses into primary and secondary
stresses--that is, heavier or lighter.
Notes: Find different ways to give emphasis
to the stressed words–not simply by going up in pitch and volume. Slow the
words down, speed them up, or put pauses around them. Discover your own ways of
drawing our attention to exactly what you want us most to hear. Vanessa
Redgrave and Garrison Keillor are two actors endlessly resourceful in varying
their stresses.
Follow-up: Listen to readings by skilled
speakers, especially while reading the text and marking the stresses. For
political speeches, listen to Churchill and Clinton; for poetry and drama, Maya
Angelou (who studied voice), Sidney Poitier and Richard Burton; for religious
speaking, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Pope John Paul II (who studied theatre).
3. "More Tone Interest"
Tone interest--also called "tonal
shift"--refers to the quality of thought or feeling expressed in the
voice. When the voice is free, it acts like litmus paper in registering the
subtlest shift in our attitude toward the words we are speaking. Wonderful
speakers are extremely vocally sensitive to the language’s essence and
connotations, and their voices shift rapidly throughout a sentence.
Pairs of practice words:
1. cupcake, storm
2. wicked, brave
3. flying, gobbling
4. cave, daisy
5. tiara, gunboat
Ideas for experimenting: Say the
first two words with a vastly different quality to your voice. Then reverse the
words, so you are saying "storm" as you would normally say
"cupcake," and vice versa. Repeat with the other pairs.
Note: Combine this with pitch, pace
and volume.
Follow-up: Make your own pairs of practice
words. Listen to good voices, live and recorded, increasing your awareness of
natural tonal shifting. Listen in languages you don’t know. Explain tonal shift
to someone.
In conclusion: Everyone who knows the how
to’s of vocal delivery will tell you that expressivity is not simply a talent
one is born with. The vocal artistry that an actor brings to dramatic text is
not mysterious, but is mastered like any other skill or sensibility. For
marvelous, practical reading on melody in speech, rhythm and tonal
expressivity, I recommend: Jon Eisenson’s Voice and Diction: A Program for
Improvement; Cicero’s On Oratory and Orators; Robert Pinsky’s The
Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide; and Reynaldo Hahn’s On Singers and
Singing. Pursue their suggestions. Then let the world say that your voice
is just your "natural talent."
Lissa Tyler Renaud, Ph.D. is an
award-winning actress, a recognized director, a published writer-scholar and
program director/teacher of the Actors’
Training Project and the Voice Training Project.