Posts Tagged text
Text: Beginnings and Endings
Peter Brook is known for having championed the idea of "beginning, middle, and end" in everything on stage, including the beginning, middle and end of the play, the scene, the beat, the moment, the speech, the sentence, the phrase, the word, the breath, the thought, the gesture, the action, etc. etc. etc. But many of us are unaware of our beginnings, middles and ends. We make our way through our work as performers, and as people, just doing. An awareness of how we start and end enables us to focus on transitions between parts of greater wholes, and in these transitions lies great interest and excitement for both the performer and the audience.
In this final step in the Advanced Voice Warm-up, we'll use beginnings and endings as a way to explore language. We'll use a poem to explore this idea, but you could apply the ideas of the step to a monologue from a play, a speech from a film, a bit of copy from a print ad in a magazine, or a long bit of narration from a novel.
As is often the case with voice work, we'll use a Shakespeare Sonnet today. They're great for this task as the have very clear beginnings, middles and endings, on many levels. You can use any sonnet you like, of course, but for here I'll use Sonnet 29.
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 29
This text features many elements that are like a long list. Begin by recognizing that this sonnet is one sentence. Explore this thought by trying to make it through the whole sonnet as a whole, focusing on its beginning, and its ending, which is summed up in the last two lines (or couplet.)
It might be easier to conceive of this great idea as a gathering of many smaller ideas, as a bunch of bullet points and parenthetical phrases:
When
(in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,)
- I all alone beweep my outcast state,
- And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
- And look upon my self and curse my fate,
- Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
- Featured like him,
- like him with friends possessed,
- Desiring
- this man's art,
- and that man's scope,
Yet…
(in these thoughts my self almost despising,)
…Haply I think on thee,
and then my state…
(Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth)
…sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Read through this text in this new format out loud. I've broken the piece into many small parts, so that they link into larger chunks, and into the whole poem. The three largest chunks begin "WHEN…" and "YET…" and "FOR…" The first major thought marries the first 2 quatrains into an 8 line long chunk.
Beginnings…
To reinforce the beginnings of each of the subthoughts in the text, add a gesture to your reading for each major word that begins a thought, like this:
When
(in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,)
- I all alone beweep my outcast state,
- And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
- And look upon my self and curse my fate,
- Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
- Featured like him,
- like him with friends possessed,
- Desiring
- this man's art,
- and that man's scope,
Yet…
(in these thoughts my self almost despising,)
…Haply I think on thee,
and then my state…
(Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth)
…sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Of course, this is only one level of the exploration. We could dig deeper and look at the meter of the poetry, focusing on the counterpoint of the ideas in the phrases and the rhythmic flow of the pentameter (or poetic line.) You might explore a similar gesturing on the first word of each line of the sonnet and see where that takes you.
…and Endings
Choosing a single final word to each thought phrase is challenging, because sometime we need to stress more than one word to get the full gist of the line. For instance, in the first line we don't want to just "whallop" the word "eyes," as it is very important that the idea is about "men's eyes," as the character of the sonnet is disgraced in the eyes of men. With that in mind, try to work your way through the sonnet once more, this time explore the idea of that end of thought with a little self-hug: wrap your arms around your chest, and on the end of each thought phrase, give yourself a squeeze through the words. [We'll ignore single word lines for this time around. Try it out:
When
(in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,)
- I all alone beweep my outcast state,
- And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
- And look upon my self and curse my fate,
- Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
- Featured like him,
- like him with friends possessed,
- Desiring
- this man's art,
- and that man's scope,
Yet…
(in these thoughts my self almost despising,)
…Haply I think on thee,
and then my state…
(Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth)
…sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
This squeezing certainly needs to be explored with the ends of the lines as well, as that kind of ending needs to be valued at least as much as the ends of thought.
Our final step is to work our way through the entire sonnet, trying to feel both beginning and endings of thoughts at once. I'll ask you to jump back up to the top, and read it in standard format again, this time trying to feel both the beginnings and ends of the thoughts as they appear to you. In this way, you can begin to notice the pattern that your reading of my division of the text may have had an impact on your work, or not. For what is most important is that you not copy some "right way" but that you greet the text afresh, letting your mind investigate the beginnings and endings of thoughts (and ultimately lines as well) with vigour, curiosity and relish.
Next Step: Advanced Warm-up Conclusion
Jawless Text
Posted by earmstro in Voice, Warm-ups, intermediate on April 21st, 2009
- This post is available for download as an audio file.
This exercise seeks to challenge you to integrate some of the feeling you've gotten from the warm-up up to this point into your acting. In particular, the focus is on letting your jaw stay out of the way, and encourage your tongue to do the work. For this step in the warm-up, you'll need a piece of text, preferrably a memorized text, to apply the work to.
I will be using a passage of Cassius' from Julius Caesar: "Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world | Like a Colossus…" (The picture at left is an artist’s rendering of the Colossus at Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.) I'll be using a First Folio edition to discuss the text, but that's not important. It's merely what I have on hand. Here's the speech:
Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walke under his huge legges, and peepe about
To finde our selves dishonourable Graves .
Men at sometime, are Masters of their Fates .
The fault (deere Brutus) is not in our Starres,
But in our Selves, that we are underlings .
Brutus and Cæsar : What should be in that Cæsar?
Why should that name be sounded more then yours :
Write them together : Yours, is as faire a Name :
Sound them, it doth become the mouth aswell :
Weigh them, it is as heavy : Conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a Spirit as soone as Cæsar,
Now in the names of all the Gods at once,
Upon what meate doth this our Cæsar feede,
That he is growne so great? Age, thou art sham'd .
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of Noble Bloods .
When went there by an Age, since the great Flood,
But it was fam'd with more then with one man?
When could they say (till now) that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide Walkes incompast but one man?
Now it is Rome indeed, and Roome enough
When there is in it but one onely man .
O! you and I, have heard our Fathers say,
There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd
Th'eternall Divell to keepe his State in Rome,
As easily as a King .
Clearly, from the title of this posting, you can guess what we're going to do. We're going to try to speak the text, as intelligibly as possible, without using our jaws, or at least as little as possible. The challenge, of course, is in the "intelligibly" part. Speaking aloud is hard enough as it is; immobilizing your jaw in the midst of it is madness, surely.
Agreed, it will be difficult, but the point is not to keep this strategy as a lifelong habit. No. The idea is merely to experiment with the feeling of having the jaw dropped. You may find that you can have more space in your mouth without too much effort.
Voweling the Text
To begin, let's focus on the vowels of the text by "voweling the text," at least a little, as the vowels are the most open part of any utterance. Vowels can be made with the tongue alone, so we can let the jaw hang while the tongue does its dance inside the mouth to articulate the vowels. Speaking a text with vowels only sounds rather strange, and for many people it is a mental gymnastics routine that they find frustratingly hard to do. Go slowly, and be sure to let the sound flow from one vowel to the next without any breaks. So, in the text above, I would "chunk" the text up into little bits of two or three words, and flow my way through the vowels, like this:
Text: Why Man
Vowels: eye a
IPA: [aɪ ˈæ ]
He doth bestride
Ee uh uh Eye
[ iː ˌʌ ə ˈaɪ ]
the narrow world
uh air owe ur
[ ə ˈɛə oʊ ˈɜː ]
like a collossus
eye uh uh ah uh
[ˌaɪ ə ə ˈɒ ə]
This then should be done to the whole text, chunk by chunk. Once you've worked your way through the whole text, try to put it together, flowing all the vowels of a thought onto a single breath, like this…
Text: Why man he doth bestride the narrow world like a collossus…
Vowels: eye a Ee uh uh Eye uh air owe ur eye uh uh ah uh
IPA: [aɪ ˈæ iː ˌʌ ə ˈaɪː ə ˈɛə oʊ ˈɜː ˌaɪ ə ə ˈɒ ə ]
Now try to work your way, slowly, through your entire text, voweling it instead of speaking it. Think the thoughts! Speak this gibberish THINKING the words, but only saying the vowels, letting it flow out, relishing the important word-vowels, and skipping lightly over the less important ones.
Back to the Jaw
We need to try that now with an awareness of the jaw. If you need to do a little jaw shake to remember what a released jaw feels like, do that first. Think of your jaw as being very heavy, as if it was made of lead or concrete, and it was dropping toward the ground. With your imagination focused on a heavy jaw, energize your tongue and lips to articulate the vowels of your text in an focused, precise manner so that the vowels are specific, and never muddy. Remember to flow through the words, as if you were speaking clearly and intelligibly, communicating the feelings behind this text.
Adding Back the Consonants
The final step here is to speak the text "normally," that is, with the consonants back in. Some of the consonants will force you to close your mouth, ie move your jaw, more than others, especially /s/ sounds. For lip consonants ( like /p, b, m/ ), try to leave your jaw open while your lips stretch over your teeth to close, which is tricky to do. It is possible to sound fairly normal while doing this, with practice. The goal here is to practice letting the jaw go, so you can more easily create more space in the mouth for sound. Opening your mouth creates a shape like a megaphone, which amplifies the sound of your voice with less effort. Once you've made it through your whole text with a released jaw, try it again, but this time, merely focus on the text, its ideas and emotions and what it does to you. Is there any carryover from the jaw dropping into this exploration? Usually there is a subtle shift that occurs, where the idea of a heavier jaw becomes more part of the range of possibilities available to you.
- This post is also available in a condensed form, so once you understand the idea of jawless text and voweling, you can add it to your warm-up playlist.
Taking it to Text Basics
- This post is available for download as an audio file, so you can do the work along with the recording.
Now that you've warmed-up your voice and your articulators are going, now's the time to apply this new-found sound/sensation awareness to some language, the text of some play or poem. What you speak at this point doesn't matter too much, but why work on poor quality text, when you can work on the best?
For this example, I'll use a portion of William Shakespeare'e Henry V, the very beginning of the first Chorus speech, The Prologue, however you should feel free to use any text that you feel is worthy of your exploration (and that you have memorized). If you don't have anything memorized, you could always learn this one! It begins:
O For a Muse of Fire, that would ascend
The brightest Heaven of Invention:
A Kingdom for a Stage, Princes to Act,
And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene.
Then should the Warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the Port of Mars, and at his heels
(Leasht in, like Hounds) should Famine, Sword, and Fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, Gentles all:
The flat unraysed Spirits, that hath dar'd,
On this unworthy Scaffold, to bring forth
So great an Object. Can this Cock-Pit hold
The vastie fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this Wooden O. the very Casks
That did affright the Air at Agincourt?
O pardon: since a crooked Figure may
Attest in little place a Million,
And let us, Cyphers to this great Accompt,
On your imaginarie Forces worke.
I've taken the liberty of changing some of the more obscure spelling and typographical conventions in the Folio text, and converted those to modern spellings.
So, now we have a text to work on, let's begin by either reading it through aloud or speaking it, also aloud. I cannot stress enough the need to do voice work out loud, that is "on one's voice" and not in your head or in a whisper. The number of times I find students working on an exercise or a text and they're doing it sotto voce or off their voice, would astound you! As you work, give yourself permission to play with your voice, to let the feel of your voice guide you to go beyond your preconceived notions of your voice, and into a new place of discovery and exploration.
FuFFing the Text
As we so often do, I'd invite you to take time with your text to notice your breath. That's how this Basic Warm-up Series began, and it's good to return to that now. Speak the text, and allow your breath impulse to guide you when to breathe. See whether you can breathe based on the "chunks of thought" in the text. Perhaps they will be broken up by the line structure of the text, as the thought process is often revealed in the verse structure of a classical text. Perhaps the punctuation will guide you. Whatever happens, allow yourself to feel your way through the text. Take your time! There is no need to rush your way through.
Now, take some time to let your breath connect with the rhythm and thoughts of the text. Speak the text, but instead of saying the text, replace each syllable with /f/, letting the stresses fall on the important words. Let the /f/ sound be fluffy and fairly noisy (as /f/'s go!), and allow your breath to come as it's needed. Perhaps it will be connected to the thought chunks that you explored above; don't be surprised if this /f/-based version demands more breaths of you, so you're allowing breath more often. Once you've "fuffed" your way through the entire text, now try speaking the text, and see whether the breath connection has had an impact.
Hummming the Text
Finally, let's explore the sound of your voice through the text. Though you don't want to LISTEN to your voice as you're doing this, we do want to explore opening up the possibilities of your voice, and the sound it makes. In the same way that we just explored breath with the "fuffing," Hum your way through the text, replacing every syllable with /m/. It's really important to focus on the ideas of the language, and not worry too much about the sound. Instead, worry about how the ideas create buzziness in your teeth, lips, face and hard palate. How do your ideas get buzzed out? Once you spoken the text through on /m/, immediately speak the text again seeing whether there is a connection between the buzziness and the language.
This is the final step in the Basic Warm-up Series. For suggestions on where to go next, check out the Basic Warm-up Series Conclusion.
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Eric Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Voice and Speech at the Dept. of Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University.
Eric Armstrong is a Full Member of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the national organization of professional performers and coaches working in the English-language recorded media.
The VoiceGuy is a proud member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.
The VoiceGuy is an Associate Editor of the International Dialects of English Archive.
