Vocal Awareness - Gotcha

The Six Properties of Voice are:

• Pitch
• Pace
• Volume
• Timbre
• Accent
• Emphasis

In one of our lessons, we had to do an exercise with a partner about directing a monologue from the script of 'Gotcha' by Barrie Keefe, and they had to perform the monologue we chose for them to do. We had to annotate the monologue with instructions for our partner on how to perform it in terms of accent, tone, pace, volume, pitch, and also the words we wanted them to emphasize. I worked with Chandler Goddard, and I chose to direct the monologue where the Kid is talking about when he first arrived at the school. He would speak in a East end accent; with a very harsh and quite sarcastic tone to it; the pace would start off quite fast but then it would slowly drop towards the end of the monologue to show the more emotional part of it; the volume would be loud to start with and would then drop to a more quiet volume to go with the pace of it; the pitch would be quite low because it is like he is mumbling away to himself in sadness; and finally I wanted the words 'lovely', 'great', 'bona fide', and 'first' need to
be emphasized.
Did the actor respond well to your direction?
I think that Chandler responded very well to my direction, he performed the monologue exactly how I wanted it to be done in all the ways.  

What worked when put into practice?
I think that everything worked when it was put into practice, the accent was well spoken and projected; the tone was very good, I think that the sarcastic tone made it sound more effective; I thought that the pace being fast and then dropping to slow worked well; and finally I think that the volume of the monologue worked well and it made the sarcasm work better as well; I think the pitch worked very well being low because it showed us that he was quite down in this part of the story; I think the emphasis on those four words worked very well because it helped show the audience that those words are important. I think all the pauses work very well too because it showed to the audience how he was feeling at those moments.   

What didn't work when put into practice?
I didn't find anything to not work when it was put into practice.  

Is it easy to respond to direction from your peers?
I thought that responding to direction from my peers was quite straight forward as all you need to do is listen to what the director requires you to do and follow their instructions, but then I think as well it can be quite stressful when the director is getting you to do something how they particularly want it to be done, but me and Chandler didn't really have that problem as both directions of each monologue were done successfully.