Shakespeare monologue evaluation
Of all the lessons we have had at college I think I find the voice lessons one of the most beneficial in relation to me moving forward as an actor. I feel I have really moved forward. My characterisation has improved vastly since the beginning of the course, before I was merely reading the lines and reacting and now I am really getting into the background of the characters; what are they feeling? Why are they feeling this? How can I portray this emotion realistically? There are lots of little techniques that we have looked at and used during the voice lessons, for instance I had never done a vocal warm up consistently every time I began working and it was surprising to me how effective it was. I thought at first that it was just a formality and that it wasn’t really very necessary, but the volume you can reach before a warm up and after are considerably different so much so that I will always be doing one in future. But not only does it improve everybody’s projection etc, it also brings everybody’s energy levels way up, it includes everybody in a big group exercise and brings everybody together and really gets the energy levels up in those early morning starts, I think all of these things pushed together really make for better performances all round from everybody. But the most important part of the warm up exercises were pointing out the flaws in our projection techniques. One of the main points was our breathing, before the exercises we were breathing as normal and trying to project like that, however it turned out that we were supposed to be breathing in and out using our stomach muscles, ensuring that we filled our lungs completely and that we pushed it out with the up most efficiency and strength. There were other points such as relaxation and posture that all in all, I feel, have improved my sound quite a lot.
