Thursday 18th September 2014

Thursday 18^th September 2014

Today in theatre we worked on articulation, voice projection and staying in role. Practising voice projection helped us to make sure our voices were heard. This lesson had helped me learn to develop my character even more to reach its strongest ability. After we finished our warm-ups and stretches, we rehearsed our scenes we were given. My character is Meggie (Calum’s mum). After my group performed our short piece, we were given feedback. I understand that being given feedback is to help get a better understanding of how to develop your character further. One way I learnt how to enhance my role was to think of how my character talks, my character is lower class, so she wouldn’t talk very posh, she might talk with a more common voice. Also I realised a way to improve my acting was to control my movements, I noticed that when I act sometimes a shift on my feet. So for next lesson I’m going to work on improving my movement, because I now know that it is quite distracting and unnecessary if I don’t need to move.

However I did receive good feedback, this was that my voice projection was clear and I didn’t rush my sentences so everyone understood what I was saying. I was also told that my body language and tone of voice was very good at representing my characters emotions. One more thing that I was told was good about my acting was that using pauses really helped enhance the tension and emotion in the scene. Pauses also give actors a chance to show their emotions through their facial expressions and body language. I also understand that staying in role has a huge impact on the audience. If somebody breaks their character for a split second the whole of the scene is ruined for the audience because the character has been broke and the actor has stopped acting.

It is incredibly important that an actor always warms up their body and voice. Stretches for an actor’s body is important so that they don’t pull a muscle when acting. Theatre is supposed to be exaggerated so that all the audience can see what is being acted. It is very different from TV and film. So if an actor is on stage acting it’s possible that they could pull a muscle with their over exaggerated movements. Voice warm-ups are just as important as body warm-ups, if not more! This is because an actor is most likely going to use their voice sometime in a play, therefore voice warm-ups are very important to stretch all the muscles in your mouth and focus on projecting your voice. This helps for when you go onto stage to perform your voice is fully warmed up to be able to project your voice to the back of the theatre so everybody can hear loud and clear.

For next lesson I am going to focus on developing my characters tone of voice to show even more my characters class. I am also going to work on my unnecessary movements to try and relax my body when I act so that the whole of my body is acting as my character.