1. What are the aspects of voice production that an actor needs to keep in mind when he acts? How does voice help in characterisation? (Read up on the works of Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg for reference.)
In her book Voice and the Actor, Cicely Berry introduces four basic aspects of voice production, which she feels are essential in fulfilling. I personally agree that an actor should always keep sight of these points. These are
1) Clarity
Clarity is a given requirement in delivering your lines as it is often through what you reveal of yourself that the audience gets to know your character better. If the audience cannot even comprehend what you’re saying, then half the battle is already lost as it hampers the audience’s understanding of your character and they will also be completely clueless of the going-ons in the play.
2) Adapting your voice to the space
Again, it is very important to make sure you are able to project your voice to the entire room, right to the very last row. You may have a normal, clear speaking voice but the real challenge and a mark of a true actor is to still be able to vary between “shouting” and “whispering” on stage, and having the ability and energy to sustain it across to any audience size. A skilled actor will know how to differentiate a shout in a 1000-seater auditorium and a shout in a cozy blackbox and adjust to these circumstances accordingly. If done properly, this aids the actor in conserving energy for his role.
3) Placing and balancing your vowels and consonants, so as to add resonance
This is a very, very important point in my opinion as this could potentially make or break your character. If you are truly able to control and manipulate the words effectively, you can play up the strengths and conceal the flaws of your voice. At the same time, you are able to vary your tone, diction and pitch to layer your vocal performance with various elements to make it an interesting one. Also, with carefully timed enunciation and pronunciation of certain words, one is able to highlight and bring to the audience’s attention emphasis of certain points. This could heighten your performance immensely and keep the audience in eager anticipation or fear, depending on the mood which you wish to portray. This also helps to build up your character as it adds intensity, range and variety to the role.
4) Bringing your point across (ie. Actually conveying the meaning of the word)
Of course, this is the primary element that has to be fulfilled. Actors must be careful not to get too carried away with indulging in dramatizing the voice that one forgets to convey the message of the play! You need to be sure of what you are saying, and believe in it, then you can project it out effectively and develop your character more convincingly. If you cannot even properly articulate your words, this shows you probably don’t know your character or his motivations well enough
Cicely Berry also believed that it was very important to have greater freedom in the voice. To achieve this, the actor must be aware of the difference between one’s personal tension and the tension of the character and the situation. In Voice and the Actor, she listed some exercises for actors to do to free up the tension in various body parts. She emphasized that this was of utmost importance as “unnecessary tension is energy wasted”. Based on my own experience, I agree with this. For the role of Teck Whee that I undertook, I was playing a fatigued character who had a lot of suppressed unhappiness and fears hidden inside him. I thought that to play him convincingly, I too had to tense up my body to bring out that pressure he faced. So I often hunched over in my role and thus my shoulders and neck were not freed up. This caused my voice to have a very heavy, throaty quality that was often unclear and sometimes incomprehensible throughout the play! Therefore it is important to release oneself to any blockage to have nice voice quality.
Overall, Cicely’s main point was that using the voice is just as physical as using any other part of the body. Unless deliberate (ie. In mime), the exclusion of the voice will lead to a performance that is not as whole or convincing. The voice is after all the mental-physical tie-up, therefore it “must be free and responsive enough to reflect what you think and feel.”
Similarly, Patsy Rodenburg states that actors must think of their “voices as instruments which they must learn to play properly and pitch in different ways to accommodate to different sorts of characters and texts.” In her book, The Actor Speaks: Voice and the Performer, she teaches in detailed emphasis the anatomy of voice, outlining the chain of physical relationships between our body parts(eg. Body, breath, larynx, tongue muscles) that help us produce sound. Through her detailed analysis, she is trying to show how actors must be aware of their body, how they are able to harness “a rush of energy” as “sound rises up within us literally from ground level”.
2. Is voice the most important ‘tool’ for an actor? Why or why not?
In my opinion, I never feel that there is ever one most important tool for an actor. These tools need to be suitably used in balance to showcase a character the best way possible. However, I would agree that voice is one of two most important tools. (The other most important tool in my opinion is physical action/movements.) What is more important is not to posses a good voice, but to know how to utilize and exercise this voice. After all, being equipped with a nice voice can only guarantee a good reading. The difference is that in acting, voice has to bring the text alive!
Of course, the extent to which the importance of the voice is as an acting tool is highly dependent on the script and the range (ie. Technical difficulties of language) it demands from the actor. A good example of a play which relies heavily on voice to bring out the different, underlying tones and nuances written into the script would be the extract She’s Dead by Paul Abelman. From lines 76-104 (“Officer, I have a confession to make….Skull Lane”), a variety of meaning can be derived depending on how actors playing 1 and 2 decide to act. I remember in class, we first tried playing 1 with a satirical tone against 2 with a mechanical, business-like tone. Then we played 1 as a timid persona to contrast with 2 as someone pompous, of the higher class. Both produced vastly different effects! Although both managed to bring out the light-hearted, parody tones of the play, the 2 different ways made us discover from the play different perspectives, and brought to light different issues. All these serve to prove how voice is indeed a very powerful tool, able to elicit in an audience different reactions. Thus, voice can be used to manipulate the audience’s desired response if implemented properly by the actor.
While it is important to embrace the voice as a mighty tool in theatre, we must note that the voice is often used only as a compliment to the physicality that staging presents. In fact, there are quite a few genres of theatre that do not even rely on the voice, such as Mime and older, more traditional theatre forms, such as the Japanese Noh. These theatre forms completely eliminate voice and use stylized motions instead.
In conclusion, I feel that an actor must learn to stretch his voice, so then he can then stretch his character. It is important to embrace the voice as a mighty tool for the actor, as it is an essential communicator in the theatre, but it most definitely cannot substitute other acting tools.
- Sonia
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