switching your character on stage
November 24th, 2008 by admin
We were given a good piece of advice by the director of Laramie: to illustrate different characters, especially of different ages, change the tone/level of your voice primarily, rather than the accent.
Now that I think of it, maybe the actor who played Dawson in the movie of A Few Good Men actually raised his voice to that most unpleasant timbre to become the teenage marine he was playing.
I’ve found that while the advise holds true, it can be difficult to remember exactly at which pitch each character lives.
I guess it depends if you’re a kinesthetic or a visual learner. If you’re the former, you’d probably find that certain movements, posture and tension would help you conjure up each character. For the visual learner however, whilst the movements and stances of the subject are vital, I find an actual picture of them is important. If like in my case, no picture or description exists, it becomes even more important to have something to visualise. Even if you have a picture, how do you relate it to the sound of their voice when it’s a subtle variation in sound?
There have been two things I’ve discovered:
- Typically there are entrance points of text that help you get into character. These are helpful to run through your head just prior to continuing on with new dialogue in later scenes.
- It’s also helpful to imagine where in your mouth the person speaks from. For me, if I can isolate a certain area in the mouth that they “live” so to speak, I can slip back into them quite seemlessly.
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