Finding Character through Physicality in Singing

Dr Kevin A. Quarmby

This class will explore the physical characteristics of operatic characters. Importantly, it will give you the tools with which to base your interpretations of a character and to put those interpretations into action. It will show you the importance of asking specific questions when approaching any character in performance. Questions like:

1. How do they move, stand and occupy the stage?
2. What difference does costume make?
3. How do we put this into our singing?
4. How can we put those characters across in an audition?

The first half of the class will be general movement.

The second half of the class will consist of four or five students working on an aria with both Kevin and Alison, with all of us exploring the character through their singing.

INTRODUCTION:

As you will appreciate by the end of this session, the idea that a ‘character' needs to be created purely for a performance setting is a misnomer. In fact, a ‘character' and ‘character awareness' are vital parts of the entire creative process, from entering the audition space and presenting yourself to potential employers, through rehearsals and getting the most from yourself and those with whom you are onstage, and beyond to the staged performance itself. Also, ‘performance setting' does not just mean a staged opera; the techniques we will discuss should be applied to any ‘performance setting', especially to the oratorio, where a supposed lack of ‘acting' might imply an accompanying lack of character. As we will see, character through physicality is just as vital a component of the oratorio as it is vital to control the nerves of an audition or the histrionics of an opera performance.

Why should we be concerned with ‘character through physicality'?

Very few people here, I hope, are taking the time and trouble to train their voices simply for the pleasure of hearing themselves sing. You are not here so that you can stand up at family gatherings and impress aunts and grandparents. You are not here to entertain local church gatherings.

You are here because you have made the artistic choice -- the artistic decision -- to embark on a paid career as a professional singer, someone who is employed to do what you and your employer deem you do best of all -- sing.

This workshop will highlight the importance of a commercial attitude to your performance, an attitude which is often neglected in the search for artistic purity and skill. It is this attitude which will tip the balance in your favour when auditioning for singing roles, whether in college or in the wider marketplace.

I am not debasing your commitment to your voices. Neither am I suggesting that this will provide any shortcuts to a singing career. Your dedication to your training is a fundamental aspect of what you are and what you do. Your dedication -- the length of time that you dedicate to honing your craft, to developing your voices with the guidance and assistance of your singing teachers -- is what will, ultimately, pay the best dividends.

BUT, the marketplace is full of good, sometimes great singers. This workshop will help you to present yourself, from the very start of your careers, in the best possible light.

Ultimately, you want to work. To work, you must package yourself to maximise your potential. When you walk into an audition, you must present an artist who is comfortable in, and aware of, their own physicality, and (no matter how nervous you might be feeling inside) projects a level of confidence that will comfort those who might be seeing and hearing you for the first time, your potential employers or college entrance examiners.

Because, let's not forget, even if you send a CD of your singing in advance, few master class workshops and certainly no employer or college, will accept you in a role or on a course or for an oratorio performance, without first having seen you. They want to be sure that your future audiences -- audience in its purest sense as auditors, listeners to you voices -- are going to be satisfied on a visual as well as aural level.

Don't panic, that doesn't mean that we all have to look like models, that we all have to be ‘beautiful' (whatever that ugly word actually means); it does mean that we have to be comfortable in our own individual physicality and confident in what that physicality projects to the world.

How can we begin to understand what ‘comfortable and confident in outer physicality' really means?

To begin with, I am going to invite you to explore movement together, as a group. We are all here because we want to be here (at least, Alison has assured me nobody has been forced to be here against their wishes!!). Because we all want to be here, we all want to gain the most from the experience.

We are not here to judge. You are not in an audition. You are in a safe environment of mutual support. This is a learning space, a space to make mistakes. You can only learn from making mistakes. You are the lucky ones. You can make your mistakes here -- we can all learn by the many mistakes that each of us are going to make -- and it will not adversely affect your future training or performing careers. Quite the reverse, you will leave having discovered more about yourselves and your potential than you could ever imagine. You will also learn which aspects of your performance and character technique needs most work, most thought.

Let us begin then with a warm-up exercise like no singing warm-up exercise you've ever done before.

PHYSICAL AWARENESS

I want to be sure that all are vocally warm, but I also need physical ‘warmth'.

There's nothing more important than spatial awareness as a group, certainly to begin with. Once you have that under your belt -- awareness of how others react to and/or perceive you -- then you can alter your spatial identity to suit any role.

1. General shakeup. Massage face. Stretch. Gurn.
2. Alexander wide-armed embrace -- absurd grinning and, when completely an utterly engaged with the space, an ‘aargh' of absolute joy and bliss.

This allows you to feel foolish, but also to realise that everyone else is feeling exactly the same. It is also very liberating.

1. Find partner. Stand back-to-back. Wriggle, gently, not too aggressively. Massage each other's back. Now, sitting comfortably within your vocal range, allow a note to resonate through each other's body. Pitch a note and allow your partner to harmonize with that note. Feel the sound, feel to harmony resonate through each other's backs. Shift your bodies slightly -- remain in contact but experience how the sound travels between you.
2. You've all experienced feeling like fools, wandering wide-armed and wide-eyed around the space. Now experience a new you. You are all individuals travelling in a collective mass. You must negotiate your space, but you have as much right to that space as anyone else. There must be NO physical contact whatsoever. There should be no priority. No one person is of more worth than the next, but also no one person is of less value than the rest. This is the ultimate artistic democracy.

What I have done is got you to experience moving as a group but with spatial awareness. Now I want you to do the same again. I want you to continue to move around the space, aware of your own physical presence in the space and of the uniformity of your right to be there.

BUT This time, I want you to be aware of others around you. Much more aware than you were before. Look directly at the people you pass. Engage with the eyes. It doesn't need a vocalization because often such vocalizations are platitudes -- masks to hide our lack of self-worth. Instead, acknowledge the presence of others with the eyes and make your presence felt with your eyes.

What did you learn from that experience?

Hopefully, you will have seen that one of the most important tools in communicating a character is eye-contact. You have to feel comfortable in directing your gaze at a person or object with absolute purpose. When you see great performances onstage in an opera or oratorio, you will see absolute conviction in the eyes. This requires concentration. Early in your careers, when you might not be blessed with the most labour-intensive or taxing parts, concentration is even more important. In fact, the les you are required to do onstage, the more labour-intensive and taxing it really is.

I learnt very early in my career the vital importance of listening, especially of listening within the character. If you have ever been to a less-than-professional production (perhaps you've even been in one, I know I have) you will have seen a number of people onstage ‘acting' that they are listening. It's a dead giveaway. You cannot act ‘listening'; you can only ‘listen', and to do that, you have already to have found the reality and integrity of your character.

SO eyes -- they are the tools with which to communicate with your fellow performers and/or with the audience

ears -- are the tools with which to engage with everything that is happening onstage. But that engagement has to be within the reality of the character you have chosen to play -- it cannot be you the performer pretending to listen or listening because you have been told to listen.

What things can help us find a character through physicality? Are there any shortcuts? Are there any hard-and-fast rules?

First of all, I need to assure you that this is simply another technique that you can learn, and learn very easily, and which once learned you can apply to almost every personal or professional circumstance in life. It can be applied to the audition or the interview, to the stage performance or the concert hall oratorio, to the church or cathedral, to the television or film camera and, just as importantly, to the radio or recording studio microphone.

Microphone? Hold on, who can see me through a microphone? The relevance is that, it doesn't matter whether an audience can see you or not, the truth of a character and the physical truth with which you imbibe that character, will inevitably colour your vocal personality even in a studio setting. That colour is what every radio-play actor knows and what so many people fail to realise. Physical awareness, alterations to our physicality, affect not only how a character appears, but also how they sound and how they interact with other performers.

Before we ask the individual performers to present their pieces, let us just explore two simple aspects of character through physicality. The first, self-presentation in the audition space, the second, self-presentation in a generic operatic setting.

Remember, when entering an audition space, when walking purposefully through the door to meet potential employers or admission tutors, you should already be in character long before they first set their eyes on you. Arrive early at the audition. Take time to relax. To warm up your voice and to warm up your personality. That's not a joke. You might have just struggled across town on a packed tube train, missed a coup[le of busses, got up late and slapped some make-up on, or spent a long day at other rehearsals.

What you must take to find, then, is the you you want to project to them. The you which will make them sit up and take notice, The you which will, subconsciously, assure them that this is someone they must take seriously and consider. When you walk thought the door, you should already be in character. Perhaps that character alters for the actual piece you will perform. No matter. What is important is that the FIRST impression is based on that FIRST character.

Physical confidence will come from physical awareness. Try holding your body in different ways. Practice looking at yourself in front of a mirror as much as possible. This is not vanity. This is an attempt to find as objective an idea of your projected image as possible. Spot the things you like about yourself. Focus on those as positives. Be aware of things you might not like. If they can be masked, then go ahead, mask them. If they can't, accept them as part of your unique identity. Embrace your individuality and uniqueness. This will ensure that you will, at least, be remembered.

[Practical] Let us just practice entering a room.

NOW for physicality in an opera setting.

Some tips:

• Rehearsals are times to explore not just to learn. Exploration can only come with absolute commitment. You must be willing to throw yourself wholeheartedly into the rehearsal process. Certainly you will find more established performers ‘cruising' through rehearsals only to shine like radiant stars on the first night. This happens. Try not to be lulled into a false sense of security about this. If someone is giving you nothing during rehearsals, be brave. Massage a few egos. Say, “I'd heard such wonderful things about your performance technique and it is such a pleasure to watch and learn a professional at work.” It's amazing how effective this can be.
• Rehearsals are invariably in rehearsal clothes. You are in comfortable clothes tonight. You must learn the technique of visualization. Even if you are wearing trainers or casual clothing , you must imagine yourself in the costumes that you will eventually wear. Nearly every rehearsal will begin with a design discussion. Look at the images that are supplied. Ignite what the costumes will feel like to wear. Are they corseted, or are the shoes of a particular style? Is there anything that you particularly need to know about the period, how did they bow and curtsy, how did they wish to present themselves to the world? Now take this limited information and build a mental picture of yourself in these costumes. No matter what you are wearing for rehearsals, don't leave it until the technicals or dress rehearsals to ‘discover' the physicality of your character. Again, those who have long established themselves in the business have a head start. They have experienced several styles and costumes. They know what to expect. You are early on in your careers so you need to do a bit more homework. Key in the period into Google, find out about the people, what they wore, and look at contemporary images.
• If you are preparing for an oratorio, prepare physically for the constraints of a gown or of a dress suit. There is nothing more noticeable than a novice performer who has ‘arrived' onstage having poured themselves into a dress or suit, only to appear uncomfortable or ill-at-ease. Practice at home and in front of mirrors. Wear the clothes -- with the proper shoes -- so you have experience of walking, of standing and sitting, of presenting your personal ‘character' to a mirror.

[Practical] Let us just practice commanding a space using our imaginations to dress our bodies in clothes and shoes other than the casual gear we are wearing. Now we must change that physicality to match a different role. First, let us be a Countess, or the Count, and now a Susannah or a Figaro.

Such body awareness, such physical appreciation of character, prevents you being a monotone singer.

Let us now workshop the individual performances. These are:

Susie Buckle; ‘Vedrai Carino' from Don Giovanni

Felicity Davies; ‘Ach, ich fúhl's' from The Magic Flute

Hilary Whitmore; ‘Porgi Amor' from Figaro or Rusalka's ‘Song to the Moon'

Clemmie Franks; ‘Qui Sedes' from the Bach B Minor Mass

Rosie Bell; ‘Be Kind and Courteous' (Midsummer Night's Dream)

Sanjay Agarwala; ‘Every Valley' from The Messiah or ‘Una Furtiva Lagrima' from L'elisir d'amore