D2: DEVELOP VOCAL AND PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE TECHNIQUE, SHOWING CONSISTENT CONTROL, PHYSICAL EASE AND AN IMAGINATIVE RESPONSE TO CHARACTER AND RESPONDING TO STYLE OF AUDITION TEXT
D3: DEMONSTRATE EFFECTIVE AND CONFIDENT VOCAL AND PHYSICAL TECHNIQUE IN AN AUDITION SITUATION
Stags and Hens by Willy Russell:
"Ogh...God! Did y'see the state of him. An; he was serious. He tried to get off with me1 He was all of four foot nothin'. You should have given yours the elbow straight away. Didn't y'see me tryin'? "Are you stayin' up?" he says to me. All three foot six of him starin' up at me. I said "I don't know about stayin' up, don't y' think y' better sit down before y' get trodden on." He didn't have any feelings. He just ignored everythin'. He wouldn't take no for an answer. I said to him, "Look son, I'll let y' into a secret, it's no use tryin' it on with me, I'm a lesbian..." It did no good. "That's alright", he said, "I like a challenge," By this time I'm dancin' away again, hopin' no-one'd see me with him. And honest to God, he's so small he kept gettin' lost. I'm just walkin' away when he appaears again. "Goin' for a drink are we?" he says, I said to him, "Ey you'd better run along, Snow White'll be lookin' for you." Ey he didn't get it though. "Oh I'm sorry", I said, "But I thought you were one of the seventh dwarfs." He started laughin' then, y'know, makin' out he's got a sense of humour. "Oh yeh", he says, "I'm dozy," I said "Your'e not friggin' kiddin'..." I'm walkin' away an' he's shoutin' after me "Ey I'll see y' in the bar, I'll be in the bar. I said "Yeh, an that's the best place for you, along with every other pint that think's it's a quart!"
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| Stags and Hens cast |
"A boozy comedy of wedding-eve nerves, set in the Gents and Ladies loos of a tacky Liverpool club where Dave and Linda, unbeknownst to each other, are holding their respective stag and hen parties." This has to be my favourite monologue out of the three of them!! Its fun and upbeat and I got to try out the Liverpool accent. This was the only monologue that Sally chose for me, as I knew I wanted another contemporary monologue but couldn't find one good enough that was also contrasting to my other two.
Both the husband and wife to be hold their stag and hen parties in the same pub. This means that the play is full of alcohol, mistakes, men and woman. It's a really fun and witty play!!
The character in the monologue is called Bernadette, and of course, she is one of the hens. Bernadette is a blunt, loud and bossy character. She is married with children which means we can assume she is about 25 up. She is quite similar to perhaps my character from Man Of Mode, a restoration play, as she tells it how it is; she has no boundaries and will just say what she thinks. This just makes her character more comical especially with the mix of a bit of drunk acting!
The monologue itself isn't actually a monologue, its more of a duologue but with the other characters lines cut out of it. So the first thing I had to do was to cut it up and make sure it made sense.Similar to my As You Like It monologue, we are aware that Bernadette is talking to people but its not necessary that these characters need to be present at the time. Carol is the main character in this section of the scene, and its mainly Bernadette telling her all about this guy whom 'tried to get off with me'. Carol although described as innocent is still just as loud and feisty as Bernadette. Innocences means nothing when it comes to Carol describing the guy who tried chatting her up: "I had to Berni. He made me feel ill, honest. I hate ugly people!" http://www.lyttonplayers.co.uk/Previous%20Productions/Stags%20and%20Hens/Characters.htm
After shifting around the monologue and cutting out Carol's lines, I realised it was really quite short! But for auditions they don't want to see anything over two minutes long; this monologue falls just a bit over one minute so I settled with this. I then had the choice as to what accent I wanted to do. Obviously the intention for the play is for it to be done in a Liverpool accent but I know that I can't do that awfully well! I can't do any accents well, saying that, however I wanted to challenge myself and also make this piece as contrasting to the other two monologues. So I began to work on researching the Liverpool accent:
"And that is one of the biggest features to the Liverpool accent, the 'ck' 'k' sound. It is generally done in the back of the throat." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY4aUdpK5qE In this clip, he walked me through some of the key sounds to the Liverpool accent. As quote above, he says that the 'ck' sound is the most important sound. This is a very glottal sound, coming from the back of the vocal folds, making a sort of 'choking' sound. For this, the mouth needs to remain fairly small, which is in contrast to the Northern accent I had to learn for a production early last year. I found that as I was improving the accent, that I didn't need my mouth open much at all as I began to notice, the more research I did, that Liverpudlians talk very inwardly. Their words aren't overly directed outwards, like perhaps the German or American accent is. I found that I was doing this too, because it meant it was easier for my to sustain the accent.
The word chicken was the one word I practised the most with, in order to get the accent. Us Southerners, we pronounce the word chicken with a very pure 'ick' sound. The sound of the k is smooth with a bit of harshness as you reach the end of the sound. However, for the Liverpool accent, this word is turned into a lot harsher and less audible. The ck sound merges into more of an h sound. So it becomes 'chihicken' but with the ck a lot more subtle. I found practising this word harder the more I tried it. It's all about getting the glottal sound to it, which I can do but then as soon as I try to do it for a bigger text, such as the monologue, I tend to loose it again.
So a word that I found a lot easier to say in the accent was serious: "Did'y see the state of him?An' he was serious". Again, as Southerners, we say this line nice and slowly to get the 'ri' sound of the word out correctly. Whereas, in the Liverpool accent, the line is delivered much quicker but rolling the r sound instead of having to make it into the glottal sound. I can roll my r's well and so this word felt a lot easier for me. And saying this line well meant I could go into the next line better with the word 'tried' another word that I focussed on rolling my r sound.
With research, I came across Blood Brothers. Another Willy Rusell story about two twin brothers separated at birth. I understand that this is performed in a Liverpudlian accent, and from my research, people were recommending you practise the accent on a certain bit of text from the play; Blood Brothers:
Both the husband and wife to be hold their stag and hen parties in the same pub. This means that the play is full of alcohol, mistakes, men and woman. It's a really fun and witty play!!
The character in the monologue is called Bernadette, and of course, she is one of the hens. Bernadette is a blunt, loud and bossy character. She is married with children which means we can assume she is about 25 up. She is quite similar to perhaps my character from Man Of Mode, a restoration play, as she tells it how it is; she has no boundaries and will just say what she thinks. This just makes her character more comical especially with the mix of a bit of drunk acting!
The monologue itself isn't actually a monologue, its more of a duologue but with the other characters lines cut out of it. So the first thing I had to do was to cut it up and make sure it made sense.Similar to my As You Like It monologue, we are aware that Bernadette is talking to people but its not necessary that these characters need to be present at the time. Carol is the main character in this section of the scene, and its mainly Bernadette telling her all about this guy whom 'tried to get off with me'. Carol although described as innocent is still just as loud and feisty as Bernadette. Innocences means nothing when it comes to Carol describing the guy who tried chatting her up: "I had to Berni. He made me feel ill, honest. I hate ugly people!" http://www.lyttonplayers.co.uk/Previous%20Productions/Stags%20and%20Hens/Characters.htm
After shifting around the monologue and cutting out Carol's lines, I realised it was really quite short! But for auditions they don't want to see anything over two minutes long; this monologue falls just a bit over one minute so I settled with this. I then had the choice as to what accent I wanted to do. Obviously the intention for the play is for it to be done in a Liverpool accent but I know that I can't do that awfully well! I can't do any accents well, saying that, however I wanted to challenge myself and also make this piece as contrasting to the other two monologues. So I began to work on researching the Liverpool accent:
"And that is one of the biggest features to the Liverpool accent, the 'ck' 'k' sound. It is generally done in the back of the throat." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY4aUdpK5qE In this clip, he walked me through some of the key sounds to the Liverpool accent. As quote above, he says that the 'ck' sound is the most important sound. This is a very glottal sound, coming from the back of the vocal folds, making a sort of 'choking' sound. For this, the mouth needs to remain fairly small, which is in contrast to the Northern accent I had to learn for a production early last year. I found that as I was improving the accent, that I didn't need my mouth open much at all as I began to notice, the more research I did, that Liverpudlians talk very inwardly. Their words aren't overly directed outwards, like perhaps the German or American accent is. I found that I was doing this too, because it meant it was easier for my to sustain the accent.
The word chicken was the one word I practised the most with, in order to get the accent. Us Southerners, we pronounce the word chicken with a very pure 'ick' sound. The sound of the k is smooth with a bit of harshness as you reach the end of the sound. However, for the Liverpool accent, this word is turned into a lot harsher and less audible. The ck sound merges into more of an h sound. So it becomes 'chihicken' but with the ck a lot more subtle. I found practising this word harder the more I tried it. It's all about getting the glottal sound to it, which I can do but then as soon as I try to do it for a bigger text, such as the monologue, I tend to loose it again.
So a word that I found a lot easier to say in the accent was serious: "Did'y see the state of him?An' he was serious". Again, as Southerners, we say this line nice and slowly to get the 'ri' sound of the word out correctly. Whereas, in the Liverpool accent, the line is delivered much quicker but rolling the r sound instead of having to make it into the glottal sound. I can roll my r's well and so this word felt a lot easier for me. And saying this line well meant I could go into the next line better with the word 'tried' another word that I focussed on rolling my r sound.
With research, I came across Blood Brothers. Another Willy Rusell story about two twin brothers separated at birth. I understand that this is performed in a Liverpudlian accent, and from my research, people were recommending you practise the accent on a certain bit of text from the play; Blood Brothers:
"I sometimes hate our Sammy,
He robbed my toy car y'know
Now the wheels are missin' an' the tops broke off
An' the bleedin' thing won't go"
This is only a very short section from the play. This part was recommended because Russell writes in the accent, which means you can see the words phonetically, which definitely helped a lot with me learning the accent. However I wrote it down as to how I knew I needed to say all the words:
"Aye sum'times ate hour' Sammy
E robbed me toy caaar you'knoww
Now the wheels r missin' an' the tops brooke off
An' the bleedin' thing woon't goo"
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| Bernadette and Carol |
This may not make an awful lot of sense to anyone else reading it, but for me I can hear how the words are meant to sound when reading and writing them phonetically like this. For example, the word i changes significantly in the Liverpool accent. We pronounce it with force coming from the back of the throat, vocal folds. It is then changed into an 'ayyye' sound. So it sort of comes out like an 'ah' sound at the beginning of the word, and then it ends on a slight inflection of the voice with an 'e' sound. All 'h' sounds disappear when doing this accent. So like the word 'he' turns into just the 'e' sound. I tend to elongate this e into an eee sound. Other words I elongated during this exercise were words such as: car. For us, this is a nice short word, but its really drawn out in the accent. The 'a' sound is the sound thats elongated, which turns it into 'caaaar'. The 'd' sounds are also sounds that are rare in the accent, especially at the end of words, such as the word 'and'. It turns into a very simple 'an' sound.
To continue this work, I worked through the monologue, working on writing each word phonetically. This really helped me with learning it as I began to learn it in the accent:
"Ogh Godd, did ya seee the staate of im' an' e was serious
E triedd to get oof with me
E wos all foour fooot noothin.
Aat leaast you got rid oof yoours afTer the first danCe
Din' ya see me try'in
Are you staayying op? E says t' me
Aal three fooot sixx oof im staaring op at me
Aye don' knoow bout' staaying op
Don' ya think ya better sit doown, before ya get trodden oon?
E din ave any feelin's tho
E just ignored everythin
Aye said t im,
Looook sooon
Aye'll let ya in't a secrret
It's noooo use tryingg it on wid me
Immmm a lesbian.
It did nooo good
That's allllright, e says
I loke a challenge
By this timee I'mmm dancin away again
Oping' nooone will see me wid him
Nd honest to god ee's so smoll he kept gettin lost
Immm walkin away an e appears again
Goin' for a driinnk are we e says
I says to im don ya think ya better run along? Snooww white'll be lookin' for ya
Aye he din get it tho
Oh im sorrrry I said, bot aye thought you weore oone of the seven dwarfs
E stated laffing then, y'know makin oaut ee's got a sense oof 'umour
Eugh yeah, e says, Immm dozy
Aye said yous not friggin kiddin
Imma walkin away again an ee's shoutin after me
Aye'll be in the bar, Aye'll see ya in the bar
Nd aye said, an thats the best plaace for ya, aloong wid everyoother piint that thinks its a quarrt"
Like the Blood Brothers example, I wrote words that needed special elongation with an extra letter in to allow me to see physically, what sound needed to be drawn out more. The 'h' and 'd' 'g' sounds were replaced with a apostrophe to show that part of the word get's cut off. Some words don't even look like words, but again thats purely because that's how they sound, so like words such as 'like'. It has a slight cockney 'o' sound to it, which is why you see it written as 'loke' above.
I wanted to know talk to you about the suitability of this monologue for auditions. And to start us off, no. It's really not suitable for an audition. Although the gender and age range of Bernadette is right for my acting age, and the length of the piece is just about suitable. They don't like you doing an accent; unless you can do it word perfect! - which I cannot! I still performed this monologue because I know my lecturer allowed me to do an accented piece, but I understand that this would be one that I could never use for an audition. The accent I do is ok, I feel confident doing it now after working a lot on it, however I know it's not perfect and no where near strong enough to perform for an audition. In terms of how fun and up beat the monologue is, I think it would be a really strong audition piece for me (excluding the accent issue!) For auditions, they like you showing yourself but also showing a little bit more. People see me as fairly quiet and show, but once you get to know me, I'm a little bit more confident and louder, perhaps a little bit like Bernadette. This piece allows me to go wild a little bit, and although I don't like doing that an awful lot on stage, I can do it!
I gather I performed a really weak version of this monologue, but in my voice lessons with my other lecturer, I performed it really well with a much stronger accent!! So although it's definitely not suitable for auditions, it's definitely a monologue I want to keep to hand for the future, because it shows people a bit more of what I can do on stage!!
Unlike the other two monologues, I added more movement to this monologue. This was firstly because its a much more upbeat monologue in the first place. Also because Bernadette is meant to be quite intoxicated! And you don't see many drunk people standing still and talking well for such a long time. I made sure to relax my feet a lot more, when it came to this monologue to allow me to move around a bit. I paid a lot of attention to how much I was moving and swaying however, because I know when you get nervous you can start to shift your weight and its really distracting! As a little part of my rehearsals, I would hold my right hand as though I was holding a beer glass or something of the sort. This isn't something that was necessary but it just helped me build up my character, and I felt as though it just worked. I made a lot of my arm movements a lot bigger than I normally would, again to represent the over-confidence of a drunk person, which is where the imaginary beer glass in my hand worked. Obviously the monologue is all about this midget guy chatting her up, so I set out to make sure I was directing any quotes in the monologue towards the floor, as though he really was extremely short!
Like I said, I performed this monologue really recently to my voice class, and annoyingly it went so, so much better than it did for this assessment! I felt like the accent was a lot clearer and I sustained it throughout the entire monologue better than I had done for Sally. But I also made Bernadette a much larger and louder character! I was too reserved and going into Issie when performing it for Sally, but for Karen I became the character a lot more. I think this was because I had the class as my audience. I know I definitely have an element of wanting to make people laugh and because I'am relatively confident with doing this within my class, I felt like I could really just go for it and really over do the accent and the drunkeness and the talking to the midget. It also helped a lot that I got a lot of audience reactions from doing all this...the monologue is meant to be funny so it helped that I got the class laughing; although it did put me off my lines for a second or so! I was so annoyed with how my performance of this monologue went in comparison to when I performed it for Karen, but I think I know understand that I work better when working off of people. In this case, I had the audience to work off, as soon as they were laughing and reacting, I knew I could go further with it. But with Sally, I had no reaction (and I can expect to get no reaction from a proper audition situation) which gave me no indication as to make more of it! I think this counts for me outside of acting as well, which is interesting.
Like my other monologues, I didn't have the opportunity to show this to my lecturer before performing. which I think definitely would've helped me. Although I looked into how other people performed Bernadette in order to get more understanding of the character to help me with playing her for this monologue. Dancing Thru The Dark is the film interpretation of Stags and Hens.So this was the best means for me to find how Bernadette is to be played.
Whilst watching the film, I made notes on Bernadette and her characteristics etc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNafudj7m3Y
I wanted to know talk to you about the suitability of this monologue for auditions. And to start us off, no. It's really not suitable for an audition. Although the gender and age range of Bernadette is right for my acting age, and the length of the piece is just about suitable. They don't like you doing an accent; unless you can do it word perfect! - which I cannot! I still performed this monologue because I know my lecturer allowed me to do an accented piece, but I understand that this would be one that I could never use for an audition. The accent I do is ok, I feel confident doing it now after working a lot on it, however I know it's not perfect and no where near strong enough to perform for an audition. In terms of how fun and up beat the monologue is, I think it would be a really strong audition piece for me (excluding the accent issue!) For auditions, they like you showing yourself but also showing a little bit more. People see me as fairly quiet and show, but once you get to know me, I'm a little bit more confident and louder, perhaps a little bit like Bernadette. This piece allows me to go wild a little bit, and although I don't like doing that an awful lot on stage, I can do it!
I gather I performed a really weak version of this monologue, but in my voice lessons with my other lecturer, I performed it really well with a much stronger accent!! So although it's definitely not suitable for auditions, it's definitely a monologue I want to keep to hand for the future, because it shows people a bit more of what I can do on stage!!
Unlike the other two monologues, I added more movement to this monologue. This was firstly because its a much more upbeat monologue in the first place. Also because Bernadette is meant to be quite intoxicated! And you don't see many drunk people standing still and talking well for such a long time. I made sure to relax my feet a lot more, when it came to this monologue to allow me to move around a bit. I paid a lot of attention to how much I was moving and swaying however, because I know when you get nervous you can start to shift your weight and its really distracting! As a little part of my rehearsals, I would hold my right hand as though I was holding a beer glass or something of the sort. This isn't something that was necessary but it just helped me build up my character, and I felt as though it just worked. I made a lot of my arm movements a lot bigger than I normally would, again to represent the over-confidence of a drunk person, which is where the imaginary beer glass in my hand worked. Obviously the monologue is all about this midget guy chatting her up, so I set out to make sure I was directing any quotes in the monologue towards the floor, as though he really was extremely short!
Like I said, I performed this monologue really recently to my voice class, and annoyingly it went so, so much better than it did for this assessment! I felt like the accent was a lot clearer and I sustained it throughout the entire monologue better than I had done for Sally. But I also made Bernadette a much larger and louder character! I was too reserved and going into Issie when performing it for Sally, but for Karen I became the character a lot more. I think this was because I had the class as my audience. I know I definitely have an element of wanting to make people laugh and because I'am relatively confident with doing this within my class, I felt like I could really just go for it and really over do the accent and the drunkeness and the talking to the midget. It also helped a lot that I got a lot of audience reactions from doing all this...the monologue is meant to be funny so it helped that I got the class laughing; although it did put me off my lines for a second or so! I was so annoyed with how my performance of this monologue went in comparison to when I performed it for Karen, but I think I know understand that I work better when working off of people. In this case, I had the audience to work off, as soon as they were laughing and reacting, I knew I could go further with it. But with Sally, I had no reaction (and I can expect to get no reaction from a proper audition situation) which gave me no indication as to make more of it! I think this counts for me outside of acting as well, which is interesting.
Like my other monologues, I didn't have the opportunity to show this to my lecturer before performing. which I think definitely would've helped me. Although I looked into how other people performed Bernadette in order to get more understanding of the character to help me with playing her for this monologue. Dancing Thru The Dark is the film interpretation of Stags and Hens.So this was the best means for me to find how Bernadette is to be played.
Whilst watching the film, I made notes on Bernadette and her characteristics etc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNafudj7m3Y- She is played by a tall actress which makes the whole relationship with the midget so much more comical
- She quite likes the men, she takes a liking to Peter from the band
- At the beginning of the film, she comes across quite boring but livens up as soon as she's drunk
- She is quietly witty, which again, comes out when she's drunk
- She looks so unimpressed with the midget dancing up against her
- She's rude to him but doesn't care that she's rude
- The next scene is just her trying to move away from him!!
- "Its no use trying it on with me, I'm a lesbian" she delivers this line calmly but then is really annoyed when he says "I like a challenge"
It was really fun watching her and noting down her characteristics! It's also a very good and funny film so I enjoyed watching! All her little reactions towards the midget are priceless and although they aren't really things I can incorporate into my monologue because there isn't anyone I can react from, I can definitely have that unimpressed atmosphere about how I perform Bernadette.
Character profile:
Bernadette is a fiery woman! She has no limits and just says what she wants. She comes across as a friendly character and attractive to men. She gets lumped with this short guy who spends the whole night trying to hit on her, and although I have been busy describing her as rude, she is polite enough to not ditch him fully. Her personality is loud and this appears more so when she's drunk! She's a very good story teller, or so I can see from the way that the monologue is written and she definitely know's how to make her friends laugh. From the monologue we can identify that she really didn't like the guy who was trying to hit on her, but she's light-hearted and simply saw the funny side in it. She goes straight back to tell her friends all about it, and its actually Carol whom questions how harsh Bernadette was towards the poor guy. Her light-heartedness could be just because she's drunk however she could've been aggressive towards him which would've created a completely different character.
Bernadette is just slightly out of my comfort zone, in terms of how loud and funny she is. However I knew that I can often be like when I'm just me, so reaching this kind of level was fairly easy for me, I just had to hype myself up to it beforehand. The accent was definitely the hardest part for me, and although it probably wasn't the strongest Liverpudlian accent, it was some sort of accent, so it gave off the same vibe in a sense. I know I didn't perform this anywhere near as good as I can do it, which I am really disappointed about, however I did really enjoy playing Bernadette and loving the monologue as much as I do, made it all so much better!
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