Much of being a good actor is the ability to use your voice in an effective way; that is why many auditions for TV shows and even movies just involve the actor or actress sitting down and reading from a script. I'm glad we are reading King Lear out loud as a class and I think it will help all of us understand the play more thoroughly.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
The Power of Voice
Today Mr. Hiedkamp introduced us to King Lear and explained to us that we would be reading it out loud as class. We all had a line to read and were told to over dramatize each line. It may seemed like a pointless exercise to do but it really wasn't. Shakespeare's plays were all written in a somewhat different kind of English from what we know today. I felt that Mr. Hiedkamp made a really good point when he said that if we can get the emotion right when we speak the play will be a lot easier to understand. This is because even if we can't understand the language that is being used we as humans can still infer what is happening based on the way the dialogue is read.
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I think that's a really good point. I also noticed how certain phrases can have different meanings based on how they are said. By reading out loud it becomes more obvious what those different meanings might be.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Reading that first act was a struggle and i'm glad we can now go back and listen to it rather than read it. It also gives other peoples interpretations of the reading rather than your own which is also helpful.
ReplyDeleteI agree that reading it out loud in class is more helpful than simply reading the text. I think that by understanding the emotion, it can make even the words that we have no idea of their definition seem easily understood which is really important when reading Shakespeare.
ReplyDeleteI think as a class we'll have just as much fun correcting inaccurate readings of the text, like belting out a line that can only be understood properly if it's spoken gently, as reading it the way Shakespeare intended. Shakespeare invented his own language, one so complex and interesting that even today people still struggle to understand it. I think making mistakes and analyzing the text more closely because of it will be just as valuable as seamless performances.
ReplyDeleteI agree that using our own emotions to interpret the play will help us to interpret the shakespearian language that is used, however, I think that the way we interpret it won't always be correct because we never lived during the Elizabethan era, but we can do our best.
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