ANTIGONE - Vocal requirements and techniques of a Greek theatre performer

Today we focussed on our voices, specifically pronunciation and looking at how to pronounce words so that they do not get mistaken for other words. In Greek theatre, actors would not have microphones and would just have to project loud enough so that the audience can hear. However, sometimes when words are not pronounced properly, they can be misheard by audience members further back in the theatron. To counter this, there are are certain vowels and consonants that must be stressed in order for that word to be heard correctly and understood. For example, 'dead' can be misheard as 'debt' if the last 'd' sound is not pronounce properly, and 'strange' can be misheard as 'stranche' if the 'g' sound is not stressed and pronounced properly.

To practice this we were each given a text entitled 'Arthur the rat' and we had to read it over, making sure to really articulate and enunciate every word. However the trick was that we had to still make it sound naturalistic - as an actor would - which was hard for us all because of where we were all brought up, this style of speech is not our natural dialect.

We the applied this to our monologues/duologues and it proved to be very beneficial. When rehearsing my monologue, there were a few lines I had to keep repeating and going over to get the correct pronunciation. The lines were "When tragedy struck him, and his rule was ended ,// your loyalty to the blood royal was never questioned," This was difficult because there are so many 'l's' and 'r's' it is almost like a tongue twister; however since learning to lift my tongue when pronouncing an 'l' to prevent the 'w' sound at the end of the pronunciation, and keep my lips back when pronouncing an 'r' to prevent it sounding like a 'w'.
The second line I had trouble with was "each brother shedding a brother's blood" which was an issue, again, because of the 'r's'.

Towards the end of the lesson, we each performed our monologues/duologues to the class. I had learnt my monologue so I was off-script, and this made me feel so much more confident with the monologue because I felt like I was actually playing a character more and I could feel the thoughts coming to me naturally. I felt a much better through line and progression in my monologue, and I made an effort to make it more conversational. The main thing I was criticised on was my over use of pauses which evidently lose the emphasis effect; when you talk and you go on for a while without really pausing, then when you do pause it makes whatever you say after that pause seem important and it sticks in the listeners head - perhaps used purposely to make the audience think about certain things. However I was told I use pauses a lot throughout the monologue so it loses that effect completely, and there are many good opportunities in the monologue for pauses and emphasis.