Helping the actors

Today I embraced my assistant directing duties and took the actors involved in Scene 3 out to do some character work and line runs.

Scene 3 is the scene where the top officers go shooting birds and embark on a discussion about the object of hanging convicts for punishments. 4/5 actors are females playing males, so I decided to start by helping them embrace their inner male. We focused on altering their movement, their voices and the way they carried themselves.

I started with Sarah. I watched the way she walked as her normal 18 year old female self, then told her to do it again but take certain things into consideration - her weight as a man, her authority and status, and the given circumstances in the scene. Automatically, her head was lifted higher, her knees wee bent slightly and her pace quickened like she had a motive. I reminded her that she would be holding a gun in this scene, and so her arms felt heavier and she took the position of a gunman.

We then focused on voices. I understood that it's difficult for a woman to speak like a man as well as hanging onto volume and pitch. I started by doing breathing exercises with them, feet shoulder width a part, hands by their sides and taking deep breaths in. Then we began by saying the simple line of "Shanon went to the shops" and focused on speaking from the stomach. Each time their voices dropped an octave. Having done the research myself before embarking on this activity with the actors, I knew it was important not to just change your tone and growl like a bear when playing a man, because that wouldn't be believable nor healthy for the throat.

We then did line runs which consisted of the actors putting down their script and simply saying the lines to each other with their new found voices, myself prompting them had they forgotten a line.

I'm not sure if I have helped the actors today, I'd like to think so. When going back into the rehearsal space and them showing the scene again to the director, I did myself actually see an improvement, and it is all about progress.