why Voice Acting

Some people may think that it is weird for me to do voice acting, some may think I have no experience with my voice and understanding vocal experimentation, or most commonly people say “yes your voice in naturally calm and soothing” but that not just all of what I can achieve. I really enjoy making weird noises with my voice, as well as deconstructing accents and understanding how they tick, but I don't express the noises and voices I can make out in public very often, I'm very shy. But I want to change this; I want to start to show that I actually have a great voice in singing and have many different characters with all my other voices. This is just very clearly and plainly, the why. I also have a deeper level of why in that this kind of acting is the kind I want to pursue later in life and want to increase and grow my repertoire and characters, so I may need to start taking notes and learning from other voice actors. This leads into why do this for the ippp, for me it is a case of this is how I’m going to improve my voice acting, and once I have made myself better I can help others to become better as well. So it is a matter of I’m going to help myself to help others, which for an IPP is actually a good thing, gives more incentive to record the process leading up to the workshop or performance. Which actually makes me wonder, workshop or performance, I want to share my knowledge and help, but I think I may want to create a performance or vocal snippet in addition to the workshop, not for IB but for myself.

acting workshops

Daniel Foley: our artist in residence this year was a Shakespearian actor by the name of Daneil Foley. our time with Daniel was actually quite short and I would have liked to have spent more time since i quite liked the vocal focus he had, at least in the second workshop we had. The first workshop was mixed with a freshman class and was lacking in information and interactive. The second session was focused on the voice and how to speak and to interpret Shakespearian text. The exercised were a great way to wake up the face for projection and for singing, because they were what they were, exercises. I now still do some of them to kind of wake up my face in order to get ready for the day. the last session was more physical and tied more closely to the play we are doing right now, Romeo and Juliet. we were having trouble with stage fighting so Daniel Foley helped out by showing our class how to do simple sword fighting techniques that look good are easy to remember which we in turn taught to the cast. one thing that was not so great was that there was no specific topic it was more opportunistic than structured.
chad Austin:
a surprise workshop was had after Daniel Foley left and he next class period there was another actor from New York who did some activities with us to find ways to stretch our acting techniques and how to be more aware of our body and even mentioned Australian actor F.M. Alexander and his technique for good posture, even though he said he did not agree with it. most important out of all was the final excerisize when he told us how to properly present ourselves to prospective directors;

• don't fidget, hand to side 
• stand tall-don't slouch
• smile- look happy and make the "judges" feel good
• don't look down- confidence will then proceed to exude from your presence
• answer with confidence=don't second guess yourself
• when you recite a piece just recite it, don't take pause to change into character,just say it

Tempest, Lear two Shakespeare plays with different interpretations

the whole idea of minimalism is personally appealing to me most of the ideas that i have had when it comes to plays have all been minimalistic, not because of lack of potential resources, but because minimalism really accentuates the themes and the symbols of a play and two plays that seem to fit that idea of minimalism is the Tempest by donellan and King Lear by Tadashi Suzuki
Tempest is the one shakespeare play that, when i  hear the name i have beautiful images of the sea and ocean, beautiful islands mostly because of what i had seen from the video that was shown to me about how the royal Shakespeare company once interpreted it.
The interpretation that the Russians had in this rendition of the Tempest was absolutely superb and very different to the one i saw in the video and the difference in of itself is a great inspiration. the Russian theatre company went for a minimalist stage with only a white wall and three doors, with sand placed in locations by the wall with little bits in the sand. the design t use the whiteness of the wall to display the scenes' backgrounds and the use of the sand and the items in them. it kind of made me think, why have the props backstage when you can have them on stage instead, not that all the props were on stage in tempest. The direction of the play was excellent and the choreography was very good not as much as Lear but i will get there later) the body floating in water, the characters physicality- the daughter , the air spirit and the one flimsy guy that was with caliban (trinculo?) all really accentuated their characters brilliantly. when it comes to scorched moments, it was not one area that i focused on, it was the usage of water as a running theme on the island, even if it only went so far, but using water on stage gave the play a feel of realism in amongst the minimalism. another memory that will stay is the onstage music played that to me represented the wind of the play and gave the play motion in sound.
on the other hand there is King lear as directed by Tadashi Suzuki, another play with a simple stage set up that worked to really accentuate the picture of the stage, the frozen scenes. a slight difference between these two shakespeare interpretations was in costumes, Tadashi seemed to put more effort into stylistic clothing whereas tthe tempest was very symbolic, and in movement. the was more action and motion in the Tempest, but the amount of physical control in King Lear astounded me. one point when the one evil daughter, the one with the memorable laugh, was giving a monologue i noticed that she was doing something with her eybrows, which led me to notice that she wasn't blinking. i had forgotten the importance of the eyes in Japanese theatre, and noticing the unblinking stare and actually experiencing that sort of physical control will make sure i never forget it again, i even spent a goo while of the play having staring contests with the actors, which led to some interesting revelations. one such one was that, because i was staring at a frozen picture it burned the images in my retina, so when there was any movement i could notice it because a sort of sillouhette was left behind. one such ncident i was staring and then mrs. Moon moved her head, then i had a mrs. Moon shaped image floating in mid air. not sure if such a finding is helpful in designing any of my own creations but it is certainly an interesting way of looking at the world. but one thing in King Lear i would like to use is some of the ligting techniques included in the play, most notably having thing hang from the ceiling and using their shadows to add texture to an otherwise plain stage, like gobos that the audience can see. another lighting technique i noticed was one we used in Good Soul of Schezwan (still cant spell it) and that was making a line of light that makes  stark separation between downstage and upstage with use of barn doors, but theirs was more professional. one complaint about this play that i heard is the reason i like it, the fact that the stage and the movement was less expressive and minimal allowed for there to be more emphasis on the words and meaning, and when they do move it is important and purposeful, but because of language barriers this made non japanese/koreans had trouble understanding what was going on at that particular time.

tppp list and paragraph

list of what to include into tppp:
symbols;
picture of the internet-driving force


influences;
dervishes- got-cultural
sienaar in die suburbs?
pina baush- dance

studied;
lighting- got good soul-
bertolt brecht good soul of setchuan
andong- actually doing mask dance
mark hill - tadashi suzuki
maybe get one with daniel foley- shakespeare

symbol paragraph:
My symbol is a picture representing all the connections of the internet, this on it's own is a good theme to have in terms of connecting ideas because it is a symbol of connection. however it is more profound than that because of what connections and the internet represents. the connections are the synthesis that we make and the connections we make in our classes, when we create theatre we are making connections to the world, between ideas, to the audience. the internet on the other hand is a tool for knowledge and for sharing knowledge and this is a theme that i believe all theatre should be about, sharing knowledge with the audience and with each other. how i can use it specifically to string the pictures together however is different. by using this symbol that is specifically about sharing knowledge is kind of the area i can use to express the symbol. the class and my whole theatre experience has been me collecting knowledge about what i can and then sharing it, notably with my family, and two of whom already know what i'm talking about so we discuss instead.

Fab Five, the tempest

company: Moscows international theatre company
director: Dunclan Donellan
form of theatre: minimalist
the play itself: Shakespearian play