Accents

Today we had a professional accent coach come in as in Our Country’s Good there is a variety of characters from all around the world. Our Country’s Good doesn’t have extravagant set and is highly focused around the strength of the actors acting. As a result of this I think that it was important to have these accent master classes to not only work on our voices but to also connect to the character more.

For my character I had to work on my RP accent as I am playing a high ranking officer. Although the accent was one that I was most comfortable with we found that making small changes to our mouths had a large effect on our voices. For example we did an exercise where we said all our lines with our lips rounded, although the sound became a very stereotypical RP it allowed us to get the sound at the front of our mouths. This was really useful as with RP the sounds had to come from the front of the mouth so that it is sharper and more articulate. We also found that certain letters were pronounced differently, for example when saying plurals the “s” turns to a “z”. Small changes like this seemed to make a huge difference to my characters accent and it really highlighted the status of the character.

 
I found the accent work really useful for my character work as it emphasised the status of my character. The accent shows that my character has been highly educated which contextually is a sign of wealth. This is supported as my characters profession is legal and is very book smart, I feel that the accent emphasises his intelligence and his power and status.

Scene Improvisation

In today’s rehearsal we used improvisation to develop and learn more about our character. We had to choose a scene to improvise from our characters past, something that wasn’t mentioned in the play, so that we could use our imaginations to start to create the backgrounds and histories of our characters. I think that this is really important as so often the past effect how people act in the present and could impact on how I act on stage, in certain situations.

The scene that I chose to improvise was the dinner with my wife, where I tell her that I am moving to Australia. I found this exercise really helpful to individualize my character and to get to know the personal background of him and start to fill in the details of his characterisation as it through up many discoveries for me. The first thing discovered was to do with my characters routine, when we sat down to eat the actor playing my wife started to say grace, I hadn’t even considered this however on reflection, contextually saying grace would be a common part of the dinner routine. This made me think about the environment that my character was brought up in and how important and prominent religion was in his society. I thought that this could be an element of home and English society that Collins takes to Australia to remind him of home. I think that this would put an even greater importance on the religious routine of saying grace as it hold such fond members of home, that could give him hope of once returning. Another part of the dinner routine that I thought was really interesting was how his wife made the dinner for him and the gender roles that were brought up in the improvisation. Over dinner we discussed our children and I found that my characters interest was in the situation of our son and his progression rather than the daughters. Also I think that the emphasis put on the sons in this society could create worry for Collins in Australia as he could worry about the lack of male influence for him in England. This reflects the social norms of the dominate male and that I could take this into the physicality of my character as the alpha male. I also thought that this dinner routine, combined with the home comforts that came with living in England could lead into Collins life in Australia as it is the time that highlights his loneliness and isolation in Australia. I think that dinner would be the hardest time for my character as it was the time where he found out about his family and spend time with his wife.

I also discovered another part of Collins of where he has to consider his families position in England compared to his in Australia and the future plans for his life. For example with the colonisation in Australia and how they are trying to create a society there as well as moving the convicts, I think that this could impact on how he thinks about his future and whether Australia could be the new home for him and his family. This impacts heavily on certain lines such as “England”, when he is remembering home, and I think that this could make him really consider whether he will ever make it home. As a result of this in the improvisation I found that my character was defending and argue the positives or Australia and living there rather than always hating it. This is so that he can convince his wife to want to come with her and give up her life of comfort and status. This really made me look at the good sides to Australia and the new world that he is going to live in.