Modern Voice

Working with Actors on Contemporary Text

Catherine Weate

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781849435376
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Interprétation et audition

Modern Voice: Working with Actors on Contemporary Text has been designed to follow on from Catherine's previous book, Classic Voice: Working with Actors on Vocal Style, focusing on the less defined demands within contemporary drama. Lifting contemporary speech rhythms off the page can be a challenge for actors. Sometimes these rhythms are realistic, resembling or mirroring the speech patterns of real human beings, sometimes they are non-realistic, distorting speech patterns for particular effect. Modern Voice not only provides an accessible approach for understanding speech rhythm but also presents an overview of different types and styles of contemporary text (including the rise of dramatic realism in England, America and Australia). Along the way there are a myriad of practical ideas for directors, lecturers, teachers, trainers and coaches to explore in their workshops and rehearsals.

PART ONE:

VOCAL REALISM

CHAPTER 1: RHYTHM IN SPEECH

Understanding how rhythm works in conversational speech can help us lift dramatic dialogue off the page. As a teacher, coach, lecturer or director, you will need to spend time listening to the ways in which human beings use rhythm to communicate so that you can help your actors accurately recreate truthful human speech for an audience, whilst using somebody else’s words.

This chapter unpacks, in detail, all the elements that combine to form the vocal realism inherent in contemporary speech rhythm. At times, it may seem quite technical and divorced from the reality of spoken communication. For this reason, it’s a good idea to speak any examples out loud and apply what’s been written to your own way of talking in order to have a point of reference. There will always be exceptions to the ‘rules’, given the idiosyncratic nature of our speech. However, I am sure you will recognise many familiar patterns.

1. SPEECH RHYTHM: SEPARATING THE ELEMENTS

In English, speech rhythm is created by a combination of phrasing, pausing, stressing, pitching, tuning and pacing.

• Phrasing and Pausing – When we speak we communicate in groups of words, separating them out with silences of various lengths, in order to clarify more precisely what we want to say

• Stressing – When we speak we bring some information into the foreground and place some into the background, depending on what we’re trying to communicate. One of the ways in which we do this is by placing ‘stress’ on a particular syllable or syllables (by using extra breath energy, a lift in pitch and by lengthening the sound itself) and weakening the other surrounding syllables

• Pitching and Tuning – When we speak we combine different pitch levels with contours of pitch, creating a tune or intonation pattern (linked to the stresses across the phrase)

• Pacing – When we speak we vary the pace, lengthening some sounds, speeding up others, depending on their relative importance within a phrase. Faster pacing will also blur sound, changing the rhythmic energy

2. SPEECH RHYTHM: CONNECTING THE ELEMENTS

Phrasing, pausing, stressing, pitching, tuning and pacing work together in connected speech in order to express meaning and emotion. As we speak, we simultaneously group the words together, define these groups with pauses, stress some syllables, weaken others and marry them with a specific intonation tune. In fact, phrasing, pausing and stressing decide the intonation pattern.

Take a look at the following examples and then speak all three of them aloud, noting the differences between them.

I went to the supermarket | after the meeting.

I | went to the supermarket after the meeting.

I | went to the supermarket | after the meeting.

‘I went to the supermarket after the meeting’ could be said as one phrase but then again the grouping of words could be broken down further so that there are two or three pieces of information presented. This not only changes where the stresses are placed but also the tune or intonation pattern, dividing it into two or three different tunes. The elements are interdependent.

3. SPEECH RHYTHM: FORMING THE ELEMENTS

What influences and, ultimately helps to form, our speech rhythm? There are a series of variables that (unconsciously) shape the way in which we use phrasing, pausing, stressing, pitching, tuning and pacing in our speech. We are all affected by:

• The grammatical rules of the language we are speaking – grouping particular words together and giving them a specific tune helps us to maintain grammatical structures in speech, just as punctuation does in writing (although the two don’t necessarily follow the same patterns). For example, often we use pauses to mark the beginning and end of grammatical units, such as clauses and sentences.

• The drive and energy of our own internal rhythm – each of us has our own unique internal rhythmic energy that drives us physically and vocally. Rhythm is a part of our core: our hearts beat in a rhythm, we breathe in a rhythm, we eat in a rhythm, we walk in a rhythm and, of course, we speak in a rhythm.

• The drive and energy of the world in which we live – our own internal rhythms are adjusted to the world in which we live. For example, how many of you, living in a rural setting, find the tempo of city dwellers different to your own when you visit a large metropolis. You may even find the movement of crowds along a sidewalk/ pavement, at odds with your own movement. If there are physical differences then there will be vocal/speech differences as well.

• The drive and energy of the culture in which we live – our culture and language also adjusts our own internal rhythm. For example, an Italian speaker, living in a very verbal culture, may tend to use less and/or smaller silences between groups of words, giving an impression of longer, unbroken phrases. Stress and intonation patterns are very different between languages. In many Indian languages, syllables are stressed with a lowering of pitch, whereas in English we use a rise of pitch to bring a syllable into focus. Transferring an Indian intonation pattern to an English phrase will define the speaker as foreign and may lead to misunderstanding (despite the correct grammatical words being used).

• The drive and energy of the accent-dialect we speak – the way in which we use individual sounds within our accent-dialect, will also create a distinctive rhythm. For example, Italian vowels are shorter than many English vowels, creating a much more staccato rhythm. Australians and Americans often use greater vowel energy than their English cousins, who prefer a little more bite to their consonants, thereby creating a completely different rhythm. There are also lexical stress differences between accent-dialects (lexical, meaning the standard dictionary stress for a word). For example, an American may place the primary stress on the first syllable of ‘laboratory’ and elongate the -ory ending, whilst English speakers may place the stress on the second syllable and shorten or weaken the -ory ending. So, American and English speakers who use phrases with this word will have different intonation patterns (and therefore, rhythms).

• The context in which we are speaking – the difference between delivering a lecture to a large group of students and having a quiet gossipy conversation with a friend in the pub, will give you an idea of how much context affects our rhythmic delivery.

• The importance of the information we are communicating – important information will be rhythmically different to inconsequential information. Perhaps in an effort to over-clarify, there will be smaller (and more frequent) phrases, longer silences, stronger stressing, a wider intonation range and a slower pace.

• Our familiarity with the information we are communicating – our words always flow more easily (there are less hesitations) when we are familiar with the information we are communicating.

• Our emotional relationship with the information we are communicating – how we feel about the information may create a smooth, rapid delivery or pepper it with hesitations and emotive pauses. For example, human beings tend to deliver information more quickly when they are excited and slow it down when they need to think their way, emotionally, through the information.

4. SPEECH RHYTHM: ANALYSING THE ELEMENTS

In order to come to an in-depth understanding of contemporary vocal realism, we need to analyse and clarify each of the elements that combine to formspeech rhythm. Here are some initial questions that may help you to focus your thoughts in the right direction:

(a)	How do we break up our thoughts? (Phrasing and Pausing)
(b)	Where do we place the stresses within these thoughts? (Stressing)
(c)	Where do we pitch the tune across these stresses? (Pitching and Tuning)
(d)	How does our pace affect phrasing, stressing, tuning? (Pacing)

(a) PHRASING AND PAUSING

Everybody in the world breaks up their thoughts into phrases. But how do we know where the breaks occur? How do we divide the words up? How do we decide on the grouping?

SENSE-GROUPS

How we phrase is dependent on how we think. Written punctuation can give us some idea of how to group our words together (if we are reading from the printed page) but we certainly don’t think in written punctuation when we are speaking conversationally. We tend to think and speak in sense-groups (groups of words linked together by sense). The boundaries of a sense-group are marked by silence or a pause in sound (oral punctuation). Sometimes this is a conscious process, when we are measuring out our words carefully, but most of the time it is an unconscious process.

The size of the sense-group is defined by which information the speaker wants to focus the listener’s attention on, bringing some of it into the foreground and placing some of it into the background (technically speaking, stressing certain syllables to make them...

Table of contents

• Front cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface
• PART ONE: VOCAL REALISM
• PART TWO: REALISTIC DRAMA
• PART THREE: NON-REALISTIC DRAMA