lilcoh-blog

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Four Emotions 1. Gender Reveal 2. 911 Call 3. Sports Announcer 4. News Reporter

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Time For Lunch

Narrator- Car Idling

Mr. B- Turn Signal

Rex- Engine Revving

Amos- Back up Beeping

Amy- Windshield Wipers

Millie- Horn Honking

Max- Bus Braking

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Lily Cohen

Voice & Speech

October 19, 2018

The Iron Lady

The first thing that stood out to me before I even started listening to the podcast but merely watched clips of Margaret Thatcher and then of Meryl Streep playing Thatcher, I was taken back by how similar the two sounded. At the beginning of the podcast, Terry Gross also comments on the similarity between the voices of the two and Streep’s mastery of Thatcher’s accent. This made me think back to working on Drood. Though Edwin Drood was not a real person whose voice and accent I could attempt to imitate, I watched countless videos and listened to numerous podcasts in an attempt to master the mix between an RP and a Mayfair accent. I definitely learned both from Drood and from this podcast just how much work is needed to embody the voice and way of speaking of a character. Streep explains Thatcher’s process of making her voice sound more authoritative to control her people and Streep used both Thatcher’s voice prior to and after the lessons to integrate into her own voice for her character. The voice is one of the most important parts to developing a character because the way one speaks determines the effect they have on people and Meryl Streep talks a lot about the breath she needed to use to talk without breaking to ensure that others listened to her as Thatcher. Streep doesn’t consider voice to be any different from the way a character moves since they are all pieces of a person. In Thatcher, she claims, it is driven by conviction. She also mentions that in order for her to work up to Thatcher’s authoritative, fluid voice, she spoke like that all the time. I think that one thing I can apply to my own work is making sure that I’m practicing speaking like or holding myself like my character not only in rehearsal working on the specific scenes but also in everyday life while doing mundane tasks because a character is much more than just what is seen on stage. The more one practices, the better grasp they will gain on the character as a multi-dimensional person.

In addition, I was reminded of the stage makeup project when Meryl Streep and Terry Gross were talking about the makeup Streep had to wear to look much older. I found it hard to move my face and express explicit emotions by my face in the makeup, but Streep said that she refused to let it be difficult to act with that makeup on. One point that Streep pointed out that really stood out to me was the as an actor, it’s your job to convince the other actors who you are as a character. It’s not just getting into your character personally but bringing the other actors into your story of who your character is. Making the other actors believe that you ARE your character is just as important as personally believing that you are that character. Also, hearing Ms. Gross speak about the increase in difficulty for actors to get roles once they reach their 40s. I had never really thought about that before. I’ve heard and thought about the fact that it’s challenging for teenage actors to get professional stage (and sometimes screen) work, but I had never thought about the fact that at an older age, the same difficulty might be relevant again. It was very interesting to hear the two women speak about age and roles. I also was very drawn to the section in which the two women spoke about how girls can identify with male characters but straight men have harder times connecting with female characters. Most simply, some girls in the class are doing male monologues but I feel that much left often to straight men work on female monologues if not for a miscast situation. Overall, I feel like I got a lot out of watching the clips and listening to the podcast and felt that I could connect to and understand a lot it.

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Sound is essentially an interruption in the flow air in our breath. Vocal Folds are covered in a thin layer of mucus and when air pressure rises, the folds move back and forth, creating a vibration, which releases a buzzing sound. Sound is created when the pressure changes of the air passing through the moving vocal folds. The faster this movement/ vibration happens, the higher the pitch of the sound created.  When singing, tiny muscles get into a certain formation around the larynx based on the pitch the person is preparing to sing. The vocal folds only create a buzzing, while the resonators are what actually produce the sound.

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Lily Cohen, Richard III September 2018