In some accents, words like Harry, Larry, parallel, barrister,
carry, marriage, arabesque, are not part of the square lexical
set, but rather they are part of the trap set.
Thus, Harry is pronounced as it is in the Harry
Potter films. In this setting,
the vowel in the initial syllable behaves very differently than it does in
the square set.
In the square set,
the vowel tends to be a centering diphthong, where the the initial vowel
offglides into an r-coloured schwa before the /r/ that begins the second
syllable, so it is pronounced “Har-ry,” IPA [ˈhɛɚ.ɹɨ].
When this group of words is part of the trap lexical
set, there is no /r/ quality in the first syllable, so we get “Ha-rry,” IPA [ˈhæ.ɹɨ].

For speakers who are used to using the square set,
this change of having no /r/ quality before the
syllable break is quite new and may present a challenge. To practice this style
of pronunciation, we’ll do a little drill to get the sense of the first syllable.
Let’s use Ha-rry as
our word to practise with. Start by saying hat a few times: hat,
hat, hat;
now say it without the /t/: ha,
ha, ha [hæ]. Now take
that syllable and add a "ree" [ɹi] on the
end: Ha-rry. Repeat it a few times: Harry,
Harry, Harry. Finally, try that list of words, applying this sound to
them: Ha-rry, La-rry, pa-rallel, ba-rrister, ca-rry, ma-rriage,
a-rabesque. Is it still a challenge? If so, try this next step. If not,
jump down to Nuh-Luh-Ruh-Luh.

Take that list of words and isolate the first syllable by adding a /t/ to
the end of the syllable. This will set you up to nail the first vowel sound
correctly, and then you can go back and do it without the /t/. So try:

Harry: hat, ha-, ha-rry, Harry.

Larry: lat, la-, la-rry, Larry.

Parallel: pat, pa-, pa-rallel, parallel.

Barrister: bat, ba-, ba-rrister, barrister.

Carry: cat, ca-, ca-rry, carry.

Marriage: mat, ma-, ma-rriage, marriage.

Arabesque: at, a-, a-rabesque, arabesque.

Nuh-Luh-Ruh-Luh

To work on the speed and agility of the tongue, we need to work the apical
aspect of the /r/. To set ourselves up, we’ll focus on the apex of the tongue
(its tip) with /n/ and /l/. To begin, let’s alternate between the two sounds,
using the vowel “uh,” [ʌ], with “nuh-luh-nuh-luh” [ˈnʌ.lʌˈnʌ.lʌˈnʌ.lʌˈnʌ.lʌ].
Make sure that your tongue is working like a flap, and that your jaw is relaxed.
Once you’ve got that going quickly, we can begin to work on replacing the /n/
with /r/.

The apical /r/, whose IPA symbol is [ɹ], should be
made just behind where the the /n/ is made, so test this assumption with an
alternation of “nuh-ruh-nuh-ruh” [ˈnʌ.ɹʌˈnʌ.ɹʌˈnʌ.ɹʌˈnʌ.ɹʌ].
If you’re bunching the /r/ you’ll find that your tongue is pulling back dramatically
on the /r/. Resist that temptation!

The next step is to alternate /r/ with /l/, “ruh-luh-ruh-luh” [ˈɹʌ.lʌˈɹʌ.lʌˈɹʌ.lʌˈɹʌ.lʌ].
Keep the action simple and delicate, focusing on the front of your tongue.
Keep the jaw relaxed.

Now, we’ll go to the complete drill, alternating “nuh-luh” with “ruh-luh”: [ˈnʌ.lʌˈɹʌ.lʌˈnʌ.lʌˈɹʌ.lʌ].
Start slowly, and then begin to build up the speed. If you’ve been rounding
your lips on the /r/, see if you can relax your lips, forcing the full action
to lie in the front of your tongue, not in the back of your tongue or in your
lips.

This is a great drill for developing greater precision with the front of your
tongue, and should be used frequently.

First, let me explain that there are two significantly different ways in which /r/ in North American English is made. The first manner involves the action of the front of the tongue beginning to curl up and back, the start of a retroflexion or backward flip. The second manner bunches up the tongue at the back of the mouth. Similarly there are two /l/ sounds used in most forms of English around the world. The first manner involves the action of the front of the tongue, while the second manner raises the back of the tongue in the back of the mouth. So in these ways, /r/ and /l/ have a parallel pattern, though the way each one handles their two versions is quite different.

Let’s start by examining /l/. The two versions of /l/ exist in most speakers’ speech, though some accents of English, like Irish for instance, have only one. The first version arises when /l/ is at the beginning of a word or syllable when we get what is commonly called a “light L,” while the second /l/ appears at the end of a word or syllable, the so-called “dark L.” The main difference between the way these sounds are made has to do with the back of the tongue: it’s raised for the dark L, and not raised for the light L. In both light and dark L, the front of the tongue is doing a similar action: the tip of the tongue is behind the upper front teeth, while the sides of the tongue pull in, narrowing the body of the tongue. This lateral action gives /l/ its linguistic name, “lateral.”

To explore this narrowing action, start by making an /n/ sound, relaxing your jaw so that your tongue reaches up to seal off the oral cavity at the alveolar ridge. This upward reach is very similar to the action of /l/, except that it lacks the lateral narrowing. Feel the action of your tongue by going back and forth between /n/ and /l/, spending a few seconds on each sound: [nnnnnllllllnnnnnnllllllnnnnnnllllllll]. You should be able to feel that narrowing pretty dramatically.

The initial /l/ or “light L” is primarily a flap-like action, with the tongue moving up and down between that /l/ action and the open sound of a vowel. Try a series of “luh” syllables (IPA [lʌ]), tryinɡ hard to feel the action of the tonɡue slappinɡ down into the bottom of your mouth. Now, compare that to the action of the tongue on “nuh” (IPA [nʌ]). Now, alternate them: [nʌ lʌ nʌ lʌ nʌ lʌ nʌ lʌ nʌ lʌ]. Leaving your jaw dropped will help to make this action clearer, and help to isolate the tongue action. Finally, make a series of "luh"s, going up and down a five note scale, as classical singers have done for generations, isolating your tongue from your jaw.

Feeling the difference between the “light L” and the “dark L” can be hard for some of us because the action that makes the /l/ dark is a raising or arching of the back of the tongue near the soft palate, what linguists call “palatalization". This action is very similar to the action that makes the “ng” (IPA [ŋ]), where the back of the tongue rises and touches the soft palate; the palatalized /l/ doesn’t go so far as to touch the soft palate, and the soft palate stays raised so that the sound isn’t nasalized. The IPA symbol for “dark L” is an /l/ symbol with a palatalization symbol over top: [ɫ].

To try to feel the difference between “light” and “dark” we start with the word “all,” [ɑɫ] . Because we anticipate the “dark L,” the vowel is made further back than in other contexts, like in “odd” [ɑd]. You may be able to feel the this contrast if you go to say “odd” and then switch to “all” half way through, that is, make the [ɑ] and then go to the [ɫ] . Now try saying [lɑ ɑɫ] repeatedly, making sure to put a little pause between each repetition, so that you don’t hang onto the palatalization for the initial L. Can you feel the contrast? Now, consciouly keep the palatalization on the first sound, saying [ɫɑ ɑɫ] over and over — you should be able to feel the “dark” quality through the whole sound, affecting both the /l/s and the vowels.

Can you now make the “light L” in both the initial and final position? [lɑ ɑl] . You have to keep the vowels light, and just use the action of front of the tongue exclusively, not letting the back of tongue rise. To most English speaker, the second syllable won’t sound like the word “all,” unless you normally speak in that manner (e.g. if you are Irish.)

Now, let’s explore the /r/ sound. In English, there are two general types of /r/. Initial /r/, alone or in a consonant cluster like /br/, the /r/ is a true consonant. When /r/ is at the end of a syllable, after the vowel, the /r/ is what we call a "vowel /r/." English accents can be broken into two groups, ones where the vowel /r/ is spoken, known as rhotic accents, and ones where they are not, or non-rhotic accents. For the most part, accents in North America are generally rhotic (with a few exceptions, particularly in Deep South, and in parts of New England), while accents in Britain are non-rhotic (with many exceptions, of course: Cornwall, Ireland, etc.). The lexical sets in which vowel /r/ may appear include nurse, Letter, near, square, cure, force/north, start. For speakers of rhotic accents, the /r/ is not made much differently in either vowel /r/ or consonant /r/, though the energy of an intial or intervocalic /r/ is more forceful than a final /r/.

The /r/ sound is what linguists call an approximant, a sound where the tongue is near the roof of the mouth, but not so close as to create turbulence (so it isn’t a fricative sound). It’s as if the tongue bends the sound a little, and in so doing it modifies one of the formant energies of the vowel sound. We’ll look at the two primary ways that rhotic speakers make their /r/ sounds. The first is made with the tongue tip primarily, so I’ll call this version the apical /r/ (apical meaning that the sound is made with the front "apex" of the tongue.) In this version, we’ll start by putting our tongues in the /n/ position again, and then we’ll slowly drag our tongue tip back along the roof of the mouth, as if we were scraping peanut butter off the roof of our mouths. If we keep our tongues glued to the roof of the mouth, we’ll stay in a nasal position. For the sound to turn into an /r/ sound, we have to move the front edge of the tongue off the roof of our mouths, say a few millimetres (1/8"). If you merely pull your tongue off the alveolar ridge, as if you were just beginning to curl it back, you should get a very lightly /r/ coloured vowel sound. The IPA has two symbols for the vowel we’re dealing with here, a stressed one, and an unstressed one heard in words like nurse and better. When they are not r-coloured, the symbol is : [ɜ ə]; with r-colouring, those symbols have a little diacritic hooked on the upper right hand corner of the symbol: [ɝ ɚ]. It looks a little like a wing, so I call them "Flying Three" and "Flying Schwa." The non-rhotic sounds are essentially schwa [ə], though the stressed version, used in the nurse lexical set, /ɜ/ is sliɡhtly more open. If you need to clarify what schwa is, check out my post on it and its neighbour, [ʌ], heard in the strut lexical set.

The bunched /r/ is made with the body of the tongue balled up near the back of the mouth. The upper surface of the tongue is close to the roof of the mouth. Many speakers who bunch their /r/ sounds tend to round their lips. This makes the vocal tract longer, which modifies the sound of the /r/, so it’s more like the unbunched, apical /r/.

For speakers who need/want to have a strong sounding /r/, the bunched /r/ creates a very rich sound, but it is very much a back of the mouth kind of sound. Unfortunately, it is my experience that speakers who use a bunched /r/ find it more difficult to make a more subtle /r/, and variations with almost no /r/ colouring are a challenge. Also, when using a bunched /r/ for an intervocalic /r/, e.g. in words like Harry in an R.P. accent, it is harder to do a bunched /r/ as quickly and delicately as an apical /r/. Also, because the back of the tongue moves slowly, we often anticipate the bunched /r/, which colours the vowel that precedes it. This is appropriate for, say, a Texas accent, but not appropriate for others, such as GenAm or R.P. Bunched /r/ affects the preceding vowel the most in Centering Diphthongs, heard in the lexical sets near, square, cure, force/north, and start.

As I often do, I would argue that speakers who have one form of /r/ should train themselves to be able to make the alternate form of /r/. I believe that this makes accent acquisition much easier, and allows for greater accuracy when taking on an accent that features a different /r/ from your own. I believe that it generally easier to learn to do the bunched /r/ if you’re an apical /r/ speaker than it is for a bunched /r/ speaker to learn an apical /r/, based upon my experience of teaching both kinds of speaker since 1992. Your mileage may vary.

Bunched /r/

To learn to bunch your /r/, you need to make that /r/ sound as far back in your mouth as you can. I think the quickest way to learn this is to do a good Pirate ARRRR! sound. Most people know what this sounds like and can do it easily and feel how their tongue bunches up in the back. Once you’ve got that, try using that /r/ to initiate a word, such as red. The challenge, I find, for speakers new to the bunching is in doing it quickly enough. Try this little phrase, applying the bunched /r/ to the sound:

Red roses for Rhoda.

Now, we’ll try to apply this bunched /r/ to some vowels. We’ll start with a list of nurse words:

curb, turn, shirt, irk, firm, girl, twerp, verb, term, certain, heard, rehearsal, work, worst, scourge, attorney

Begin by saying the list of words as you would say them. Then, after saying a good Pirate ARRR, say each word in turn, lingering on the bunched /r/. Then, try making a more “normal” bunched /r/ (i.e. not quite so extreme) as you work your way through the list of words. As we’re easing off the intensity of the bunched /r/, do a variation where there is as little bunched /r/ sound as possible—that is, it still sounds like there is /r/ colouring, but it’s only slight. Finally, say these words with no bunching, just a central, non-rhotic /ɜ/ vowel (like you might hear in an R.P. accent.)

Now try applying that bunched /r/ sound to these words list of the lexical set words for the centering diphthongs. Some some or all of the following:

near: deer, here, interfere, cashier, fear, fierce, weird, beard, period, hero, dreary, weary

square: care, fair, bear, their, where, prayer, scarce, vary, Mary, various, area

cure*: poor, tour, allure, assure, demure, endure, lure, manure, mature, obscure, pure, bourgeois, gourmet

north/force: for, war, form, morn, important, torso, warn, aura, deplore, more, boar, floor, pork, court, Nora

start: star, part, arch, scarf, harsh, garb, large, carve, farm, barn, snarl, party, marvellous, heart, safari

* note that many speakers say all or some of these words as part of the north/force lex set, or as part of the nurse set.

Apical /r/

Now that we have the bunched /r/ out of the way, we can dig into the apical /r/. First, let’s make a heavily retroflexed /r/, where the tip of the tongue points back toward the uvula. Scrape the tongue along the roof of your mouth until the point is near where the hard palate meets the soft palate, which is about as far back as my tongue likes to go! Then peel the tongue off the roof of the mouth just slightly, so that there is about a millimetre of space between the roof of the mouth and the underside of your tongue (which is now up, because your tongue is flipped back.) Make a vowel sound here, and you should have a strongly /r/ coloured or rhotic vowel, [ɝ˞˞] (that’s a flying 3 with 3 rhotic hook diacritic marks). Try making this vowel with those nurse words from earlier:

curb, turn, shirt, irk, firm, girl, twerp, verb, term, certain, heard, rehearsal, work, worst, scourge, attorney

Now try them with the tongue not quite so far back, [ɝ˞], then just the "regular" amount, [ɝ], with the tonɡue tip curlinɡ back to just behind the alveolar ridɡe. Now try to do it with just a tiny amount of /r/, barely rhotic at all. Finally, do a non-rhotic [ɜ], as you might hear in R.P.

Next let’s try that apical /r/ on the centering diphthongs. Try varying your degree of rhoticity on the following word lists:

near: deer, here, interfere, cashier, fear, fierce, weird, beard, period, hero, dreary, weary

square: care, fair, bear, their, where, prayer, scarce, vary, Mary, various, area

cure: poor, tour, allure, assure, demure, endure, lure, manure, mature, obscure, pure, bourgeois, gourmet

north/force: for, war, form, morn, important, torso, warn, aura, deplore, more, boar, floor, pork, court, Nora

start: star, part, arch, scarf, harsh, garb, large, carve, farm, barn, snarl, party, marvellous, heart, safari

Really Larry Tongue Twister

So we’ve made it through the difference between bunched and apical /r/, and light and dark /l/. Now we’re on to a little tongue twister to tie the two sounds together. We’ll try a few variations, to try to compare and contrast dark /l/ with bunched /r/ and light /l/ with apical /r/. We’ll begin by going the backway round: using bunched /r/ and dark /l/ in all settings. Really Larry. Now try it with apical /r/ and a light /l/. Really Larry. Now try an apical /r/ with a dark /l/ on Really, and a light /l/ and a bunched /r/ on Larry. If you try to do a bunched /r/ and a light /l/ on Really with a dark /l/ and an apical /r/ on Larry, I think you’ll find that it’s extremely hard to do. Not impossible, but a real oral jungle gym to get around!

Next: Are You Speedy?

Words that begin with vowels pose a challenge to actors. How to speak these sounds? When anything begins with a vowel, there is a tendency to initiate the sound with a glottal attack. This is done by closing the vocal folds together, and then building up pressure, and then blasting the folds into motion. Let’s try an experiment, so you can see what I mean. Say the first 4 vowel letters of the alphabet: A, E, I, O. (We don’t use "U" because its name actually begins with a consonant sound, which makes it much less likely to begin with a glottal.) Now, try it again, but this time, I want you to hesitate before each letter. ….A…E…I…O. Can you feel how you close off the folds, much like holding your breath, before each of those letters? When we encounter words that begin with vowel sounds, some people put this kind of glottal sound in front of each one them.

When I was first training as an actor, I was taught that glottaling a word that begins with a vowel was a very bad idea. Since that time, I’ve come to realize that glottaling isn’t the end of the world, and that, in some cases, using an occasional glottal sound can actually make your use of language clearer, more intelligible. An example of glottal attacks used in everyday speech is in the expression "Uh-uhn," meaning "NO." In IPA we’d transcribe that with the symbol for the glottal, which looks like a question mark without a dot. [ʔʌ ʔʌ̃]. However, I am convinced that most of us don’t need to use the glottal attack very often, and that most of the time, what we really need is to link to the word beginning with a vowel from the sound that comes before, whether that’s a consonant or a vowel.

Glottal attacks put a certain "punch" on the language, emphasizing those words that begin with a vowel. Sometimes this is necessary, but often, it’s not. We need to learn to use the whole word to catch the audience’s ear, rather than punching the word with a glottal. We need to embrace the thought that the idea and emotion behind a word is carried on the open sound as much as on the staccatto of the initial consonants.

We’ll look at a passage from Henry IV, part one, as he foreshadows his eventual betrayal of Falstaff, and reveals to the audience his duplicitous nature.

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyok’d humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offense a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

I love this speech. It’s one of my most favourite plays, and this speech is the first I ever fell in love with. I’ve gone through and put an asterisk in front of every word that begins with a vowel. I want you to go through and punch, via a glottal, everyone of the them. I’m sure you’ll find that some of them are not so bad, if you punch them, and others will leave you wishing you didn’t punch them. Have a go with the first part of the speech:

*I know you *all, *and will *awhile *uphold
The *unyok’d humour *of your *idleness.
Yet herein will *I *imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother *up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please *again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d *at,
By breaking through the foul *and *ugly mists
*Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

Of course, that’s not the only way to play it! In fact, I’d say that that’s a rather odd way of playing it. The opposite way of doing it is to link the initial vowels with the sound that precedes it. So, words like you ‿all will link together. In this case, it feels almost as if there was a little linking w between the two words. In other cases, like in I ‿imitate it feels as if there was a little linking y (IPA [j]) between the vowels. Of course, words that begin phrases that begin with a vowel are a different breed. They need to begin with a simultaneous attack, where the breath and the folds come together at the same time. In the passage below, I’ve linked the words with vowels, and I’ve put a tiny h before words that need a simultaneous onset. (This is just a code — they don’t need a big "h" sound!). Try reading that passage again, trying to link as best you can.

ʰI know you ‿all, ʰand will ‿awhile ‿uphold
The ‿unyok’d humour ‿of your ‿idleness.
Yet herein will ‿I ‿imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother ‿up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please ‿again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d ‿at,
By breaking through the foul ‿and ‿ugly mists
‿Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

I’ve made a list of all the linked words, including those with vowel links that come through w-ish and y-ish sounding links (I’ve used a superscript to denote those). Try them out of context of the speech:

oo-^wall, l-awhile, l-uphold, ee-^yunyoked, r-of, r-idleness, l-I, I-^yimitate, r-up, z-again, d-at, l-and, d-ugly, s-of.

Now you might thy the whole speech again. If there’s a word that you particularly want to emphasized really strongly, you can skip my linking advice and CHOP at it vigourously with a glottal. But I think you should be able to do the speech with no glottals whatsoever first, and then try it a final time allowing a few glottals where you believe you’ve earned them.

ʰI know you ‿all, ʰand will ‿awhile ‿uphold
The ‿unyok’d humour ‿of your ‿idleness.
Yet herein will ‿I ‿imitate the Sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother ‿up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please ‿again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d ‿at,
By breaking through the foul ‿and ‿ugly mists
‿Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
ʰIf ‿all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be ‿as tedious ‿as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come,
ʰAnd nothing pleaseth but rare ‿accidents.
So when this loose behaviour ‿I throw ‿off,
ʰAnd pay the debt ‿I never promised,
By how much better than my word ‿I ‿am,
By so much shall ‿I falsify men’s hopes;
ʰAnd, like bright metal ‿on ‿a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring ‿o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly ‿and ‿attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set ‿it ‿off.
ʰI’ll so ‿offend to make ‿offense ‿a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least ‿I will.

Lists of words beginning with vowels are particularly hard, as it very possible, if there is any hesitation on your part, to glottalize them all. Try reading this list of words (that feature just about every vowel sound in English) without glottalizing any of them:

Easter eggs,
Itching powder,
Acorns
Elephants,
Apples,
Underwear,
Urchins,
Udon noodles,
Oak trees,
Awnings,
Olives,

Angels,
Eiderdowns,
Oil paintings,
Oceans,
Outdoor lighting,

Earmuffs,
Airports,
Oarlocks,
Artists.

It’s a very difficult list. But there is a trick to learning to do this: breathe in, and imagine breathing in the shape of the vowel you are about to say. Then, without hesitating, go straight into the word. Take a tiny breath to prep for the next words in the shape of its vowel sound, and on you go! It’s remarkable how well this works. If you don’t really need to breathe in, make sure your throat is open before you go on to the next word. Hesitating and closing your folds before you begin a word is death here. You need to keep that channel open so that you don’t close down.

Next: Reall Larry: R and L

Of course in rehearsal, we need to take the time to be a little indulgent as part of the process of figuring out what is needed. In fact, it’s very important to find a balance of slow, medium and fast, all in response to the appropriate play of action and reaction. Also, some characters have different internal tempos, and a dramatic contrast can be created by playing with a different internal clock than that of a scene partner.

Let’s discuss tempo as part of the range of skills that all actors come to integrate into their performance, and we’ll explore the types of demands placed upon the performer by each speed.

Slow

Going slowly is often very difficult for some actors, as they are tempted to rush through their performance. Going slowly through the language, finding the time for thought on the words, rather than between them, demands a certain kind of relish. You need to lengthen vowels and continuant consonants, so that you can stretch things out. In slowing down, you need to work with the smallest chunk of language possible, the word, and, in some cases, the syllable. It gives you a chance to really feel the substance of the language, its sounds, its links, its stops. We’ll use the following passage today for our exploration. Take it for a spin, going very slowly, but being sure to link the words together, rather than putting…. extra… space… between… the… words…

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

    Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado, "I am so Proud", 1885.

Dragging

Of course, there is always “too slow.” When one is reluctantly changing tactics, one might “drag one’s feet” verbally to indicate that reluctance. But often, actors drag because of an issue, and it’s my experience that they either has to do with poor preparation—they just don’t know what comes next and are desperately searching for the words, or with slow thinking. Both are fixed with focus on why you say what you say, rather than just drilling the words over and over. What is the connection between this idea and the next? More importantly, how does the thought that goes before move you toward the thought that comes after. For instance, if you could get through the first two lines of the above Mikado text, but blanked before “Awaiting the sensation,” you would need to figure out why “lifelong lock” would inspire “Awaiting…” If lifelong makes you wait for a lifetime, then “awaiting” is a logical next word. Making that kind of linkage makes it for easier to remember the text.

To explore the idea of draggin intensionally, work your way thrugh the Mikado text as if you didn’t know what to say next. Hesitate in mid-word, on vowels and on continuant consonants like final "m, n, l, etc."

Medium

Finding a happy balance between too slow and too fast isn’t easy, and certainly we don’t want everything to have too even a tempo. But compared to going Slow, Medium speed is where you play the sentence more than the word. In verse, such as the Mikado text we’re using here, it’s about playing the line. You need to find the operative words, and play them, but let the unimportant ones be just that: unimportant! I’ll put the Mikado text in again here so you don’t have to scroll up to see it, and try speaking it again, play one or two important words per line, but generally thinking your way through the thoughts.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

This is the kind of text that is meant to be spoken quickly; that’s a big part of the fun of Gilbert and Sullivan. But when you limit your operative words, you’ll find yourself playing things like nouns and verbs over modifiers like adjectives or adverbs. (If you’re like me and grew up without a solid grounding in grammar, you might want to read up on parts of speech, now known as "word classes".)

Monotonous Pace

Speaking monotonously doesn’t just mean speaking on a single pitch. An overly even pace an can also be flat, dull, and unappealing to the listener. It can indicate a certain sense of boredom on the part of the speaker. Rhythmic text, as we see in the lyric above, when spoken out of the context of the song, can be "sung" as if it were following the rhythm of the song. This is to be avoided, unless, of course, you’re doing it for a reason. Try speaking the text through and see if you can feel the potential for a monotonous pace. (Hint: be boring!)

Fast

If a medium pace demands an awareness of the sentence, then faster pace puts our focus on the paragraph, and its underlying argument. Sentences form steps towards our goal, while the paragraph covers the whole thing. Playing our way through this kind of language forces us to drive through the language, finding momentum to move from phrase to phrase, thought to thought, sentence to sentence, toward the conclusion of our argument. Speed requires agility to move the articulators faster than our habitual tempo, and that demands a sense of lightness or deftness so that we do not trip over complex combinations and alternations of consonants that are made in opposing manners and places in the mouth.

Fast text also demands some awareness of the breath requirements of the text. As we move quickly we want to pause less, for a shorter time, in order to move on with the ideas of the text. Less time to breathe means we have to get that breath in quickly without a build-up of unnecessary tension. Try the Mikado text again, but this time work your way through it quickly—as fast as you possibly can:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

I find that switching from the /s/ sound of "sensation" to the /ʃ/ sound of "short, sharp shock" is a a challenge. So I’ll loop the second phrase several times (at least 3) in order to imprint its action into muscle memory. Work your way through it, and any time you trip up, try looping a 3 or 4 word-long group in order to increase your ability to do the text at high speed.

Rushing

This is what happens to an actor who is skipping over the moment, not trusting it or her partner. Sometimes when an actor gets caught up in playing words at the expense of thought or emotion, this can also happen. Rushing is often a symptom of fear, in my mind. There is a disconnect that is occuring in order to get past something terrifying. As the cliche says, you must "feel the fear and do it anyway." Embrace those feelings and pour them through the language, rather than trying to get it done, over, on to the next thing.

[Probably the fastest voiceover work going these days is for the disclaimer text one finds at the ends of commercials for drugs. In recent years, pharmaceutical companies have begun to rewrite these disclaimers so they are more intelligible, so there is less of a sense the they're trying to hide something. However, it's worth noting that many of those supersonic speed deliveries are done using sophisticated audio editing software, in order to speed up the audio without raising the pitch, and to allow voiceover actors to do the clips one piece at a time in order to get the fastest clearest takes.]

Next: Chopping and Linking

Imagine a tightrope walker, working her way across the rope, carefully judging each step. Better yet, imagine yourself as the tightrope walker. Visualize what you would see, but more importantly what you would feel. In imagining this myself, my attention is first drawn to the idea of focus: this is a life-or-death activity. I must pay attention to all that I can in order to stay on that line. Where does my focus lie? In my feet, and their connection to the floor; in my alignment, sensing my body in space, adjusting to the sensations around me; in the moment, in moving my feet forward, in getting to my goal at the end of the rope. I’m not thinking about what I’m going to be making for dinner. I’m tuned into this place, this time, this activity: my life depends on it. Is it hard physical work? No. But it requires all my attention.

Acting is like that: it requires all your attention. And yet, it requires a sense of ease: it’s not a tense activity, but one where you are responsive to your environment, which includes your acting partner and the audience. That sense of ease demands a certain confidence. It’s a belief that you are worthy of being seen and heard, that your goal is achievable, that you dare to share your what scares you, that you allow your body/mind to respond "truthfully" to stimulus in the moment, without judgment, without scripting. Unfortunately, we don’t always find ourselves in the place where we have that confidence. Our fears of failure lead to second guessing, to planning the moment in order to get it "right," to limiting our responses to what we imagine before we start. And what so often happens is we fall into two ways of hiding that lack of confidence: we compensate by over-energizing, or by de-energizing.

Patsy Rodenburg, one of the most influetial voice teachers in the world, has taught, written and lead workshops around this idea a great deal. She uses the terms “Bluff” and “Deny” to describe these states. Bluffing is when you push vocally, you force your way through your argument, you demand attention without earning it. It’s a great term to describe the action the actor is using in their performance. They are playing at their objective, faking their way through it by insisting that this work. Denying is when you don’t give enough to the action you’re playing, you speak to quietly, you don’t commit to the demands of the language you’re speaking. Because you don’t believe that you can do it, you either pretend you can and bluff, or you admit defeat and deny. And though Antony is lying in Julius Caesar when he says "I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,/ Action, nor utterance, nor the powers of speech/ To stir men’s blood; I only speak right on," we must embrace his idea: that in speaking “right on,” we find ways to not to bluff through wit or words, but to simply put our focus into the language for all we’re worth.

So how do we practise this ideal, of speaking “right on?” Rodenburg suggests we start simply, and feel our way through the via negativa ("to describe God by describing what He is not"), to explore the idea and sensation of Bluff and Deny, and then try to find the middle road that is neither over-doing or under-doing. Balance is that state where one is neither falling off the rope to the left, nor falling off to the right… it is a constant state of adjustment, not a single thing, but a process.

So let’s take a simple phrase, a kind of affirmation, the kind of thing that is easy to not believe in, to force it, or pull back from because we all struggle with our self-worth, just like Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley. “I am worthy.” It’s nothing magic, it’s just a simple phrase about being “good enough.” It could be very funny; it could be deadly serious: it all depends on your point of view. For the sake of this experiment, let’s play with it as being deadly serious.

Here’s the experiment: Bluff your way through the phrase “I am worthy” in as many different ways as possible. Go to extremes. This is about falling off that balance point. Then begin to find the edge: where does it become questionable whether I’m pushing or not? Can you bluff physically, vocally, intellectually, emotionally?

Now try the opposite experiment: Deny your way through the phrase “I am worthy” in as many ways as you can. How small can you go? What pulls it "off" the balance? What does truth have to do with this? Can you find the place where it’s not clear whether you’re Denying or not? What happens physically, vocally, intellectually, emotionally, as you Deny?

You might now take a passage from something you know: a monologue, a poem, a song lyric. Try to work your way through the text, neither falling to left or right, but walking the tightrope of the language. If nothing comes to mind, try working your way across this tightrope of poetry by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

Constantly risking absurdity              
                 and death
whenever he performs                 
above the heads
                 of his audience
the poet like an acrobat                 
climbs on rime
                 to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams                 
                 above a sea of faces
paces his way                 
                 to the other side of the day
performing entrachats                 
                 and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics                 
                 and all without mistaking
any thing                 
                 for what it may not be

from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind. © 1958

In both Bluff and Deny, we discover symptoms that keep coming up. Signs that can be read by the audience or your scene partner that in many ways call you a liar. That announce that you’re not speaking “right on.” Many times, there are vocal signals: not enough or too much breath energy, vocal energy, pitch, melody, phrasing, breathiness, vocal press, manipulated diction, that doesn’t suit the space or the relationship. Each of us have our favourites, our habits that we go to by default, that we must overcome in order to go from where we “left off” in order to be “right on.” We must not "mistake / any thing / for what it may not be."

There is no one right way to speak“right on.” There are a million ways, each in response to the moment, the given circumstances, and your personal state-of-being. And there are infinite ways of losing that balance, and falling into bluff or deny. Sometimes the demands of a theatre require a scale that, if we were not acting but merely living “real life,” would feel as though we were bluffing. Sometimes the demands of a film scene, with the camera in a tight close-up, that would seem like denying in “real life.” But neither theatre nor film are real. They are a version of reality, shaped for the audience, filtered by the actor, the director and the crew. Truth is not a single thing, it is many things in response to the changing world around us. And speech is often about feeling out the world around us, sensing out our place in it, and speaking appropriately. We all have the tools to feel that. We must all embrace the world, and our place in it, to find that balance.

We are all worthy.

Next: Tempo: Dragging, Slow, Medium, Fast, and Rushing