Wednesday, March 24

VOICE
More lessons in Irish... New things we've learned include:

12. Irish has bright, light [l] sounds. The sides of the tongue are relaxed, instead of scooping up. (So L-sounds are closer to the L that we use for "lemon" than the L that we use for "all".)

13. In words that are spelled with a "wh", use an unvoiced "w" (which sort of sounds like "hw").

14. "th" words are more plosive than fricative, and are dentalized. (So they sound more like "t" or "d" than "th", depending on whether they're voiced or not, and there's more breath involved, making the sounds splashier.) This is also true of words that involve the spellings "tr" or "dr" (which some playwrights who write in dialect attempt to spell out... "thrim" instead of "trim", or "dhrink" instead of "drink"... which, to quote Paul Meier, ends up "leaving the actor to guess what that means.")

15. [t], [p], and [k] (the voiceless plosives) have a weak or absent "stop stage" (they're not very plosive at all) and then a really breathy release stage. (This is always true of consonants in final position, so Voice Professor says that she made her rule to only apply to final positions.)


Oh, fun with dialects.


MOVEMENT
In preparation for class today, we were supposed to find a character in a play that we'd like to work on, and then read the play looking for clues about them that might affect their physical characterizations. Today, we had to come in with a knowledge on how we, as the character, would walk, sit down, and lie down. We also had to find a distillation of a gesture (sometimes called an "essential gesture" or "psychological gesture") that is definitive of the character, and that we could do to immediately enter the character.

We did a really great exercise in which we were all walking around our studio as our characters at once (just sort of focusing on our inner-tempos and walks), and then had to mentally assign two other people in the class to be roles from the play. They were still being their own characters, but we just changed our point-of-view on each other. Movement Professor said that it could be as simple as thinking "this person is a GOOD THING, and that person is a BAD THING."

It was so cool. D-Train, Two-Shots-Up, and I ended up playing out a fascinating silent scene. From Two-Shots-Up's perspective, we were in Big Love, and I was her sister, and she was non-verbally warning me not to marry D-Train. From my point of view, D-Train was my friend/crush (from Eccentricities of a Nightingale), and when Two-Shots-Up was trying to get me away from him, she became a woman that I had been warning him against... and I gave up and left. And for D-Train? He was Orestes from Orestes 2.0. (I didn't talk to him about it, but it seemed like I was a Good Thing, and Two-Shots-Up was a Bad Thing).

After that, people started showing their walks, stances, gestures, etc. Then we discussed how they got to those points, and how they could take them further.

A really great note I took from Movement Professor:
As actors, we should be trying to collaborate with the playwright, not please the playwright.


ACTING
As we were starting our comedy scenes today, we discussed what you should do when cast in a play before table work.

- Read the play EVERY DAY. (Acting Professoressa recommends that you read the play every day from the day you get cast until the day the show closes.)
- Research
- Figure out your character's context and world view
- Know what every word means, and how it is pronounced
- Be able to paraphrase everything
- Have ideas on your Need
- Point-of-View on other characters and situations
- Script demands on characterization

D-Train and I read our All's Well That Ends Well scene. I love it! I'm Diana, and he's Bertram. In the scene, he's trying win me (or sleep with me... or make me his mistress). I, on the other hand, have been scheming with his wife, and am trying get him to fall into a trap. It's going to be a lot of fun to work on. I'm excited! :)