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2. Dramatic Projections
- The University of Alabama Press
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2 Dramatic Projections On a screen the study is projected; on a stage the actor is the projector. —Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film Projecting one’s voice as an actor, modulating volume and articulation such that people far away hear clearly yet those close by are not blown away, is a tricky task, but acclaimed British voice coach and author Patsy Rodenburg attacks the problem with refreshing candor and simplicity. She adopts “breathing the space” as a phrase to emphasize the naturalness of the activity, the importance of breath support for vocal power, and the mental preparation necessary for the job: “Whatever space you are performing in, stand on the stage when it’s empty and breathe to the perimeters of the theater or room” (Actor Speaks 57). This exercise requires the speaker to measure and match energy output to the specific configurations of the room. It is therefore much more challenging to breathe to the perimeter of a large house than an intimate theater of 150 seats. Performance demands grow exponentially with the size of the space.1 Just as increased size of the playing space requires greater skill from the actors , a bigger playing space requires more from the drama in order to be seen and heard. A “bigger” drama is a more powerful drama, a more compelling drama, a more emotionally rich drama than can be contained within a smaller, more intimate space. The “big” plays that I champion require huge emotional commitments from the actors who play them. Rodenburg again relates the emotional demands of a dramatic text to the vocal demands placed upon the performer by saying that “the greater the pain or passion, the bigger the sound needed to purge it. The bigger the conflict, the more clamorous the voice” (Right to Speak 225). This louder, more emotional, ringing voice carries the message of the play, though it might not be in easily understood words. Harold Pinter observed an inverse relationship between emotion and speech years ago: “The more acute the experience the less articulate its expression” (11). The actor, then, in the great pitch of a turbulent drama, relies upon the emotional intensity of vowels to convey depths of feeling at the expense of intellectual consonants. As King Lear carries the dead Cordelia onstage and bellows “Howl! Howl! Howl!,” each Dramatic Projections / 19 exclamation and exhalation taps the outrage and pathos of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. By analogy to the actor’s vocal challenge in the theater, drama, too, projects its image to an audience. The intentional pun on “projection” with respect to film ties the very different experiences of the two forms into a bundle of contrasts . Whereas the camera draws the viewer into the world and offers an extremely compelling illusion of reality, the stage drama must always bridge the distance between the performer and audience. Projection addresses the need for size and volume in the theater in order to be seen and heard as opposed to the camera’s and microphone’s ability to zoom in on the actor’s face and amplify the voice. In his comparison of theater and film, Roger Manvell identifies the playwrights ’ call to “speak up” with their writing: “The skill of the dramatist lies in writing ‘projectable,’ theatrical dialogue; in this sense, the dialogue of most plays is written ‘up,’ pitched beyond normal speech, in order to become effective as spoken by actors and actresses. . . . However realistic dialogue may seem when first heard, underlying it always is the fact of projection, a continuity or significance of speech alone that commands attention from an assembled audience” (32). Projection in the theater requires human labor, whereas cinematic projection is mechanical and technological. “Plays are performed. Movies are made,” observes Michael Caine in his book on film acting (16). Stage and film director and teacher Patrick Tucker distinguishes acting styles in the two media by comparing the distance of a stage actor from the audience with the distance of a movie actor from the camera. Actors project theatrical performances according to the size of the space in which they’re working. In films, though, actors constantly adjust their performance within a single film according to the size of the individual shot. In Tucker’s schema, a mezzanine view in the theater is equivalent to a long shot in the cinema in which the entire human figure is visible; an orchestra seat in the middle of...