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June 2021

how does voicework make you a better actor?

Voicework and honesty in acting

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Not enough coaches talk about voicework.  All actors benefit from adding in a regular voice routine and from going to voice class.  Most actors have tensions that prevent them from a voice that is freely expressive, resonant and capable of truly telling the full story. 

Some actors find that in particularly emotional scenes they slip into a higher register.  (This can make it especially difficult to make the transition from adolescent acting to adult acting, because you can get stuck in your little kid voice forever.)

But the more you work on strengthening (freeing) your voice, the easier it will be to release the tension that prevents you from fullying embodying a role and doing it justice.

CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION

I feel like something that would be really good for you to add into your regular routine would be some really good regular voicework — because sometimes what happens is when you have to get emotional, when something fires you up, your voice starts to come up into here, and it starts to almost come into a young girl’s voice.  And I think, you know, I just, I really wish that—I remember early on getting notes about my voice and just being so annoyed by it, and being like, why is that relevant?  I just didn’t understand, I really didn’t get it. I always put it off cause I didn’t really think it was that important, until I started to see how there were certain roles I couldn’t access emotionally because I didn’t have the voice to do it. And so when I started to really work on my voice this whole base opened up in my work. So it’s not just about how your voice sounds, but it’s about the freedom. It’s like unlocking—it’s like tension, you know, a lot of voicework is freeing the body. So it’s great, you know, for like, even doing Alexander work, doing voicework, any way to help you free up some of that stuff so that your voice can come from a powerful place, from your woman voice, from your, you know, strong leading lady voice.

do you know how to rehearse well?

Let’s talk about how to rehearse for your auditions and scenes

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“Rehearse how you’re going to perform.”  I bet you’ve heard that one before.  But perhaps also rehearsal can be an opportunity to intentionally rehearse how you won’t ever perform. 

Here’s an example:

Say you’re stabbing the other character with your action, right?  What happens if you expand that action and stab them at a 10, impulse alive, with your whole body and voice engaged?  Maybe you would never actually do the scene that way, but when you explore how that feels, you can pop it back down to a 2 or a 3 and sometimes inside the impulse feels like a 10.

However you choose to rehearse, do get on your feet.  If all you do is sit, write and think, when the time comes to work, you may find that all that beautiful stuff you found got stuck on the page.

 

Sarah: When you’re rehearsing, are you sitting down and kind of in your head and writing stuff down, or are you—what are you doing?

Student: When I rehearse, I’m usually in this room right here, and I’m sitting down. I have everything all opened up, I have my book here, I have the scene here on the floor, I have, you know, my verbs right next to it, and I’m just like sitting. And I break down the beats, and I’m looking this over, so I’m constantly moving, not just standing. But it’s weird because I’ve definitely rehearsed before standing, but for some reason I just usually sit and stay seated, but I should stand.

Sarah: It doesn’t necessarily have to be —what I mostly mean is out loud.

Student: Okay.

Sarah: So that it’s not—I just did an Instagram post about this because it’s been coming up, where, you know, sometimes for too long the works stays internal, and in your head and writing stuff down and even writing backstory and things, which is helpful, it’s still really helpful, but you also at the same time, wanna be trying stuff out loud, because it’s literally a different part of your brain that processes speech that also processes writing. Those are two different parts of the brain. So sometimes what happens when you’re doing a lot of that headier, scholastic writing kind of prep, then when you go to work, sometimes you realize, like, oh, it’s not there. You know, where is it?

Student: Ahh, that’s true.

Sarah: It’s both, you know. And that’s part of why I’m excited for you to get to some of these other experiments that we’ve been doing, because a lot of it is about getting it in your body. And even going too big, like “too big,” but still connected to an impulse, a real impulse, so that you can see what it feels like in a really expanded form—using your body, actually on your feet—what happens if I’m really elbowing somebody with my verb, you know? And I expand it out as big as possible, and then I slowly bring it back to a tiny, where I’m really, the dial is turned way down. So I would encourage as you continue to kind of develop this process, and it sounds like you’re carving out some good time for you, because you’re 100% right, and I really do believe that there’s no way for you to learn how to do this by thinking about it, right? It’s 100% doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, which is why I love…I used to not even offer the every other week option (and that was partially just a pandemic-related thing) but wanting people to just get in, because I do, I think that regular accountability every week of showing up and saying, I’m gonna keep on track, I’m gonna rehearse every day, I’m gonna put it in my body, so that you can really feel what that feels like to not only play an action, but to see what happens when you send it. Does it land? All my attention is on the other person, and i’m listening with my whole body, and I’ve also learned how to let go of all of that work, I’ve learned how to build a rich story about this person’s life and all the circumstances, and then to free fall and let it go and to play. And there’s no way to do that without—and it sounds like you know this—without just doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it and getting a ton of experience doing it.

getting started with a script

Before you make choices in a script do this first

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I recently had an audition coaching with an actor who had to prepare a scene about two people struggling in a relationship.

She had already made a lot of choices and wanted to hit the ground running — but as we started working I realized her choices seemed off.  We slowed down and I asked her some questions.

“What is literally happening in this scene?”  I asked her.

“Well, she’s demanding he step up and be a better boyfriend.”

“Is he?”  I asked.

She studied it again for a while.  “Oh sh*t!  She’s actually telling him he should let go and trust himself in their relationship.”

The event of the scene had been totally redefined — which meant the entire objective and actions shifted, too.  It was actually a completely different scene.  And it made sense in the story this way.

You can be the best actor in the world but if you miss the whole point of the scene you’re killing the story.

The absolute first thing to do when you get a new script, before anything else, is to read it deeply.  This seems obvious, but just like in the example above, we sometimes need reminders.  Read, read and read again every piece of material you get until you understand the event of the scene.  Once you’ve done that, you can begin.

Every scene in a good script is there for a reason and part of your job is to figure out why the scene is there in the first place.  Before you begin analyzing and breaking it all down, start with what’s literally happening.

Something like:  Julia goes to dinner with Audrey at a high-end restaurant and while her long time girlfriend Audrey is in the restroom, she tells the server she expects Audrey to propose that night. When instead Audrey breaks it off, Julia breaks a wine glass and leaves Audrey alone at the restaurant.    See how there’s no added stuff?  No – she felt this and she probably this and maybe this…?

When you discover what literally happens, you’ll start to see why it’s in the story.  If you miss why the scene is there in the first place you may end up telling the wrong story.

Then get on your feet and work out loud.  Check out my post on how to make the most of your first reads of a scene here.

CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION

What you’re always looking for, in every scene…first you’re just getting a sense of the people, of the world, what’s happening. And one of the first things you really want to look for is, what is the literal event of every scene.  What’s happening? Why might this scene be necessary in the larger story?  Like, what is literally—not the stuff we fill in as the creative people later, but what is literally on the page happening and why is this here?  The writers are saying it’s a nonnegotiable part of the story that the audience needs for some reason. Sometimes you can tell that the scene is about establishing a friendship, establishing…if it’s a love interest, you might need to establish that there’s a spark between two characters in a scene, so that you as the actor can know, it’s important that I get the chemistry here. It’s important that I make a connection with the other actor.

After you’ve done all the reading and you’ve tried to figure out as much as you can about what’s happening scene by scene for the character you’re going to always ask: what is the main objective for my character in this scene?  And it’s usually different from scene to scene. You might get really clear that there’s a clear objective for this character for the whole show. You know that happens, where it’s like, they’re trying to save the group from the monster, whenever, you know.  But then scene-by-scene there’ll be many objectives or goals.

that voice in your head...

Telling yourself you’re messing up or that you suck at acting?

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This clip is for you if you ever feel crappy in acting class when you get feedback, when you get a note from a director that leaves you feeling like you suck or even when that negative voice in your head is the only thing you can hear clearly.

CLASS CLIP TRANSCRIPTION

Sarah: Do you ever feel worried about not getting it right? Do you feel like you’re messing up? Do you feel…

Student: Yeah, sometimes.

Sarah: Yeah. I can so relate to that feeling. I remember feeling like that all the time, and that’s your own protection, that’s your own perfectionism and your own protection mechanism, it’s that stuff that comes up to kind of, to keep you safe, to guard you, to keep you protected, right. You spend your whole life trying to protect yourself from being all kinds of things, right, in the world. We put up this shield of armor to get through it, to get through life, to get through school, to get through all the stuff, we have to put all this armor on. And so, when you act, you’re asked to take that armor off, and it’s hard. And so sometimes as you’re starting to work, you can hear…I’m so used to working with actors in this way, so I see it all the time, and I want you to know that, and this is something that I remember for myself, is that when that stuff comes up, to not feel like you’re bad. To not feel like you’re failing. To just know that that’s your own defenses that are doing their job, that are doing their job to kind of keep you safe and to protect you.

But when that does come up, if you can acknowledge it…there’s like that voice that I used to call the rascal, the voice that would come up, that voice in the back of your head that’s like, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t do this, who do you think you are? You suck…you’re not tall enough, you’re not pretty enough, you’re not blah blah blah. And that—the job of that voice is to protect you. It has a place, and it’s done a good job. And you can also say, thank you, heard you, don’t need it right now, I’m good. So I just want you to know that. Sometimes I know emotion comes up when there’s, it can feel like you’re failing when you’re getting notes of, let’s try it like this, let’s try it like that, but it’s always the work. It’s always what it is. So I don’t want you to hear that there’s something wrong with where you’re at, because it’s 100% not true.