Section 3
In This Section
Your Relationship to Your Content
This course started with exploring the work Actors do to develop their own skills, and then we moved on to thinking about how we connect to the Audience right in front of us. The final part is about the content that connects you and your audience. Just as an Actor has to change approaches and think through their process for each new role, there are skills and steps you can take to serve your audience, and connect through the ways you approach your content.
Experiential Practice
Journal Reflections
-
Actors work with a variety of material from classical plays to contemporary works. Each has its own style and with it aspects that influence our ability to connect it to our audience. Getting the words from the page to the audience is part of the work of the actor. Not just knowing the words in our head but being able to translate it to our audience.
You can either use material that you are working with currently or find a piece of content that you are interested in to work with.
-
Slow vs. Fast
Read the material out loud and record yourself. Listen to your recording and take note of the speed of your reading. Go back to the same piece and slow it down. Notice each word and allow each word to have weight and a place in sharing the material. Allow space for pausing and time for the audience to hear and process.
Listen to the second read through and reflect on the differences between the two.
What did you notice? What stood out to you in your vocal tones, in the speed, the pauses, and your breathing?
-
Translate
Take the content you are working with, and record yourself reading it out loud. Then record yourself sharing the content, but putting it in your own words. Compare the two recordings.
Do you feel more interested in one or the other? And if so, what points drew in your interest as you were listening?
-
Start from the Beginning
Read and record content that you are familiar with. If possible record a video so you can watch your body movement, along with hearing your voice.
Next, record material from a subject matter that you are unfamiliar with. Something that you would generally feel confused about or have more difficulty getting through. Record yourself reading this material as well.
Compare how your voice and body sounded and moved in the first to the second video. How did your body respond and feel to material that was outside of your realm of expertise? Did it change the pace that you read? Did you stumble more? How did it impact the way the words connected to you while you listened to them?
Take some time to reflect on a skill you learned and what you recall from the beginning moments of learning that skill. How did you feel about something new and unfamiliar? How might this feeling inform how you connect to an audience that is unfamiliar with your material?
-
Change your Audience
If you have material that is meant for an adult audience challenge yourself to present it to an elementary school audience.
How would you make adjustments? What words would you change to help it translate for your audience?
Examples of different audiences could also be, explaining technology you are familiar with, to someone who is older and didn’t grow up with the same technology. For example, how might you explain setting up social media to someone who is perhaps in their 80s unfamiliar with it.
There are many ways you can change who the anticipated audience might be, try to go to as extreme of an opposite as you can think of. Allow the changes that you would need to make, open up your imagination to how you might approach and see the material and content in new ways.
If possible record yourself explaining your material to your different audiences and take time to notice what you see and hear in each recording. Reflect on how these changes impact your relationship and connection to the content.