Vocal training and puppet making

Rehearsing for the school play this week for me was only once. We change a lot the scene we had been rehearsing the last weeks. We had to start using the scaffolds; I think the use of the scaffolds will help a lot because it gets visually more interesting, so the audience doesn’t get bored.  A good, well distributed use of the space helps to give dynamism to the scene, therefore the scaffolds helps on this.

Then I had to change the voice of my character, this was very difficult for me because I couldn’t think in which voice to do, I think that in the physical exploring we are lacking of vocal training and would be helpful to build characters in the different performance to start doing it. Although I didn’t have the help of the vocal training, it took me a little more time but I finally found the voice of my character. In the last rehearsal that I use this new voice for my character I the change of voice really cut the connection between me and my character and this helps to develop my character further on.

Then making puppets, well this doesn’t really need theatrical skills, but it does need concentration. Concentration is needed to do the work fast but nice. This week I realize that the creative part of a play can make the production very difficult. For the school play the game is very creative to start with and this makes the dialog sometimes difficult because we are oblied that the character represented by the audience to be present in all the scene so we have to be careful that all what its said its only what the character can hear. This is different from “Más pequeños que el Guggenheim” that the characters could show or make dialogs without the problem that someone more is listening and can’t know what they are talking about. Then the puppets and masks; this two things are essential for the play we are doing, we can’t take them out, this takes a lot of time to prepare. The masks are much easier but puppets are really laborious. I think that for the next time we have to take in account how difficult would be the creative part and how much time we have. I don’t think that choosing puppets and masks wasn’t the right decision, but maybe because of the complicity of the production for this we could have started before (maybe in vacations).

I wonder, what could I do to develop my vocal skills? Why in theatre is so important the voice if in reality a person doesn’t choose his voice because of its personality, its just born that way. Why can I just intonate by voice different to express different feelings, why the whole voice needs to be changed sometimes?