Singing the Sh'peare
I am not one of the singers in AS YOU LIKE IT.
In fact, the one song that my co-actress Erica (playing Celia more beautifully and hilariously than any girl who ever played Celia ever played her) and I were going to sing together was cut, because it made the wedding ceremony too long.
And we all know, we gotta cut to the chase. The Great God Hymen™ speaks in couplets, makes His way off stage with the lanterns and the butterfly puppets, and then the couples get on with their coupling and coodling.
THE COODLING IS VERY IMPORTANT!!! Who has time for a FRENCH SONG? Even it IS us singing it.
But, setting my not being one of the singers aside, I find myself singing a lot in the course of my preparations for going onstage. We have a good hour to costume up, warm up, ready ourselves. I use most of it, actually, and like not feeling rushed.
Now, I've learned a lot of vocal warm-ups over the years, from my singing lessons, from the theatre, and from my training at Columbia College Chicago.
But one of my most favorite things I've learned is THIS one. (I learned this in college. It's the little things that make paying that debt back every month worth it.)
1.) Take your long speech. (Say, your epilogue. Or perhaps just a series of lines back to back, regardless of cues.)
2.) Start out at your lowest note. Sing the first line all on that note. Take the next line up a step. Then the next up a step. Do your speech over your whole vocal range, tone by tone.
3.) When this is done, do a SPEEDY MCSPEEDERTON speed-through of your lines.
4.) Last, say your lines as normal.
WHAT? Your voice is suddenly both darker and brighter, richer, fuller, FABOOSHIER??? The pacing is perfect? Everything has slipped right into place???
Well.
Ha.
I toldja.
***
I've taken it a step further, now that I know all my lines fairly well. (At least, gad, I hope I do!)
See, I have to go through all my lines at least once a day or else they get rusty and/or I get paranoid.
My mom and I'd recorded all my lines and cue lines earlier on in the rehearsal process, so that I could have them in my ear to memorize them. Because I like to memorize while I'm doing active things. Washing dishes. Going for walks. Practicing yo-yo...
But now it's gotten to the point that I can pretty much recite my lines in order, with the cues ringing in my head. I still use the recording sometimes, just because I forget which are thees sometimes, as opposed to yous. And sometimes swap a why for a wherefore. SHAKESPEARE USES BOTH, THE DORK! Interchangeably!
Anyway, my new favorite thing to do is SING ALL MY LINES.
Just like OPERA MAN!
I sound like a bad musical. A cappella, kind of meandering. But! What it does is makes me pay attention to the pacing, the musicality, the vowels and consonants, and the... the emotional (I shouldn't use that word; Mrs. Shaw hates that word) color/depth/shimmering/spikiness/shapes inherent in the words themselves. In the vowels and the consonants and the couplets and the rhythms and the rhymes. I guess.
Also it's fun to pretend I'm in AS YOU LIKE IT; THE OPERA!
And it's SUCH a good warm up for ME (Erica hates to do this one; she says it makes her sound like a stodgy preacher), because I love to sing, and because when I drop back into my normal speaking voice from one of my trills and dips or whatever, I can feel it go all golden and languid and grateful to me, like, "Okay, well, you're not singing this in your silliest soprano, or dropping into your FAKEST WHISKEY BARITONE EVER, but you've given me some things to think about, and I'll go on working for you so that you don't have to consciously consider them anymore. 'Cause, heck, I like your work ethic."
THANK YOU, VOICE!
Okay. It's 11:00. (Oops, 11:12 as I edit this.) I have to work tomorrow.
I didn't go out after my show tonight. Can you tell? Oh, I wanted to! Because I have all this ENERGY, but my ride needed to get back to Westerly right away, and other people weren't really talking about going out, so what would've been the point. I said Hallo to my NEWLY ARRIVED MIMA (coming to see the show tomorrow), and ate a snack with MI MADRE, but now the whole house is asleep.
I was so sick all last week, for tech and for opening weekend, but NOW, DARLINGS, I am feeling BETTER, and if I try to sleep now, I will merely bat my eyelashes at the ceiling until 3 AM and think dreamy thoughts of tomorrow night's possibilites.
Because, oh, help. I'M SUCH AN ACTOR.
Enough of this. Why are you still reading? Don't you know I'm just a RAMBLIN ROSALIND right now???
Scooting!
