Vocal use and Variety

Vocal use and variety

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 order to acquire good communication skills, actors need to train their vocal abilities and learn to control their voices. This control is essential for acquiring a proper style of articulation and speech . The most important thing in voice production is understanding and accepting your voice. Cicely Berry mentioned that ‘’It is very important to realize the difference between the actor's voice as it is and as it could be!’’. Her approach is that she sees the voice as involved in all aspects of the theatre’s work and would never try to separate the sound of the words from their living context, for her the two are inseparable. This is what makes her approach to an actor’s voice so necessary and valuable. She never departs from the fundamental recognition that speaking is part of a whole – ‘an expression of inner life’. Her approach to voice production and how it helps an actor can be found in her books such as ‘’Voice and the Actor’’ and ‘’The Actor and his Text’’.

In order to reconcile two distinct voices - his own, and the voice of the character - an actor has to be theoretically and practically prepared. He also needs to find out how the voice is being formed, and when, how, and why people began to explore different types of breathing and problems of voice formation.

An important aspect of voice production is breathing. Actor's creativity in the process of building a character depends on his ability to discover the way his character breathes and to adjust his breathing with the needs of that character and the demands of the genre. While analyzing a script, an actor perceives the main qualities of the character; he thinks about breath, about the way that character breathes. Each character breathes differently, in the same way that they walk and move differently; if the actor breathes properly and at a constant rate, his character can breathe differently.

An actor can play with resonators and resonance, once he has mastered their physical and physiological aspects. Actor's imagination and his ability to control the breathing will depend on the technique he has acquired and his understanding of physiological processes of voice formation and resonance. He can allow certain resonators, or resounding cavities, to become more dominant. By consciously activating particular resonators an actor can discover a vast range of different voice qualities: voice that primarily uses throat as a resonator (so called 'drop larynx' voice), one that comes from the head, nasal voice, shallow, 'white', falsetto, deep voice that comes from the chest, abdomen, diaphragm, etc. In this way, actor's voice can be transformed and adjusted to the demands of the genre.

In "The Actor Speaks: Voice and the Performer" (St. Martin's Press, 2000), Patsy Rodenburg’s most recent book, she tells actors that their voices, even more than their looks, may be their most valuable asset. One of her favorite exercises is to ask actors "to walk the journey of a speech" in Shakespeare as they deliver it. As she tells the actors: "Some sections of the speech will hurtle you forward quickly. You might even have to run." The idea behind her approach was to extend the range of the voice but not to make that range obvious, in the manner of "those old British actors who would do that to show off."

2.Is voice the most important 'tool' for an actor? Why or Why not?
The voice in my opinion is the most important ‘tool’ for an actor. The actor needs utmost skills in the use of voice, speech and language to do his work. Voice is the sound itself. Speech is the form, shape and meaning we give to sound. Language is derived from assigning meaning to vocal sounds. Control of language concerns the actor’s ability to articulate, enunciate and pronounce words properly. It has also to do with phrasing and grouping words to facilitate a listeners understanding. The actor has not only to speak clearly, but he must also pronounce the words correctly.

As much as it is through expressions that people see our emotions and feelings, we can actually use our voice to express a lot of things.

To me, having listened both as an actor on stage and in film and as an audience member the most difficult thing an actor has to do is to SOUND REAL WITH VARIETY IN THE VOICE. I weep when someone with a great look starts to act and instantly becomes laid back, monotonous, pulled in, fake, boring, every sentence ending with a parachute drop fall. Actors spend thousands of dollars delving into the self, soul-searching, analyzing motivation and feelings, etc. When all that is needed is for someone to say to them, "Get real, and have variety in the voice." The rest will come. But first sound "real" and "real" does not mean boring.

Learning how to sound real with variety cannot be taught by reading a book. It is almost impossible to write about sounding real with variety. It is something that must be heard and listened to. But I am certain that if an individual were to learn to sound real and at the same time have variety in pitch, rhythm and volume, that individual will turn out to be a great actor.

For example in Paul Abelman’s ‘’She’s Dead’’ the voice of the actors are every essential. ‘’She’s Dead’’ seems to extract humour from a very serious incident. Therefore the voice of the actor has to have the ability to give two different effects, seriousness and humour. The voice is so important as that is what would distinguish the moments of humour from the moments of seriousness. The actors have to be able to show the difference of events with their tone of voice, if not the audience would not be able to understand and differentiate the funny parts of the play from the serious ones.

Therefore in my opinion voice is the most important tool for an actor unless it is a play that requires no lines such as mimes.

Posted by Paveena Kumar