In Right to Speak, Ms Rodenburg talks about how given circumstances contribute to placement and style of speech with a beautiful example from Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler". She further discusses vocal habits we develop to deal with life's curves. A year ago, my husband was diagnosed with lung cancer, Stg 1, slow growing. They were able to remove the entire tumor last August, his margins were clear and no chemo was necessary. My husband's voice changed, not because any lingering physical problem. His emotional uncertainty landed and was held in his voice. His vocal quality said he was wary about everything he encountered but actually it was a manifestation of his desire to protect his body from any cancer still lurking. He wanted to pull in, to hunker down, to protect from invading cancer cells and for the past year his voice reflected that. As the date approached for his one year check up his voice got even more restricted. In the Dr's office when he heard the good test results there was an audible release, as you can imagine. As we move forward, he may revisit the need to protect but for now I am enjoying his vocal lightness, clear articulation, and volume that can fill an opera hall.
In today's telling, a prime example of a character's objective being shown through their vocal quality was in Bob's piece. As he pointed out at the beginning, the two characters had very different vocal qualities. While his friend's voice was full of urgency and had a driven, almost stabbing quality to it, his own voice had time to linger in expressing itself. At first, I wasn't sure why he had shared that information except that it was an interesting detail. But as the story progressed, the vocal quality of each of the character's became more significant and essential to illustrate the character's different objectives.
Wow, what a story. Now that I recall, a similar thing happened to my dad who, after being told he would likely need to get a stint in his heart went on his scheduled vacation to Las Vegas. The whole time he was in his favorite place on earth he worried about the possible operation, as well as complications, etc. His voice was heavily affected by his worry, but his deep baritone returned when the doctor showed that his veins were indeed "very juicy."
ReplyDeleteCynthia,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words.
While I had not yet read Rodenburg's section on tonal resonance (pg. 220-223) when I told my story in class on Monday, I wish that I had. The voice of Harry Chase (the character who had the urgent voice) has a gruffness to it in real life that I leave out of the story. I told this story with his son in the audience, who told me that I was close, but the gruffness was missing. I had always felt bad about that omission, but in Rodenburg gives me permission to leave this aspect of the voice out, because it does hurt my voice. She writes: “If your voice hurts your body is simply saying 'stop. Pain is a warning. Observe the warning always.'” (23).
-Bob