IT LOOKS RATHER ODD

Radio Record, 18 March 1938, Page 12

IT LOOKS RATHER ODD

When Radio Players Ate ‘Tested Before The Microphone of The NBS CARD Written For The "Record"

By

EMILE

N one of the studios of the NBS, a woman stands before a microphone reading from a script. Her voice comes through the loudspeaker into a small room nearby where the Play Producer sits at his table jotting down notes in a book. "I was struck all of a ’eap," says the woman in the studio, "Oh, really. Charles, this woman says she was struck all of a heap. Whatever that is. You had better do something about it,’ says the woman, in another voice altogether, It looks a little odd to the bystander glancing through the plate-glass window and it sounds even odder. But the woman, and the man jotting down notes at his desk, are perfectly serious and absorbed in it all.

It doesn’t seem in the slightest degree out of the way to them. It merely means that the woman whose voice is coming through the loudspeaker is having a voice test for radio play acting. OW aud then the Play Producer jumps up from his table and goes quickly through to the woman in the studio. "Yes," he says. "Quite good. Now, will you try this?"--"Have you done any dialect ??-"CQan vhN da

Ss | ied +sew broken Italian or French or German?’-""What about Cockney ?"-"Try that again. Listen while I do it. Can you get those pauses for me?’-"Now, I want you to try this. It’s a woman speaking with a great deal of passion, but it is subdued passion, very much restrained... ." Though they are in’ another room, it is quite a simple matter to know what he ig Saying. Wvery word of the conversation comes over the loudspeaker. r MIE microphone is-a wonderful detective. It shows up ° all weaknesses and strepgths in a voice with uneyring Precision. As soon as the candidate begins to do the part of "subdued passion,’ even T, the untrained bystander, can spot that there is a weakness in this rendering, that

the passion is lacking in the voice altogether, that it is not real. Only The Voice QN the stage, perhaps, the actress might have been able to "get away with it." There would have been her physical presence to distract one’s senses, the presence of the other actors, the mass emotion of the audience and the spectacle of the stage scenery. But the microphone test gives nothing but the voice. The performer is invisible. Only the instrument is heard. "WH7HEN they first hear

' their own voices over the microphone," the Play Producer told me, "people are astonished, often indignant. They are sure they don’t sound like that. "They do, of course. The microphone doesn’t lie. People hear their own voices when speaking imperfectly, because they hear them through the vibrations) of the bones in their heads; The way one hears one’s own voice is always different from the way other people hear it,"

. "Say I am‘a_ hopeful candidate for radio play acting," I said to him, "and I waut to learn how to use my voice as a character actor can, What is the best way of going about it?" . "WOU learn through the ear," said the Play Producer. "You listen to people themselves . . in the trams, in the shops, in the streets." : One could pick up copy anywhere. To find out how an old man spoke, .one listened to an old man in. the streets. If one had the part of an Italian, one sought eut an Italian greengrocer aud heard how he spoke. All good stage parts were built around the people whom the actor had seen or heard, it was an absorbing pursuit, said (Contd. on page 89.)

UT though the sight of men and women in strange postures and with animated faces talking into a metal box may fook singularly odd to the bystander, it may make all the difference to the quality of the radio play that comes to the ears of the listener. For the quality of the voice-the broadcaster's -only means of reaching the senses of his hearersdepends on how far the player can whip his own emotions up to the frantic pace of those in real life.

It Looks Rather Odd (Continued from ‘page’ 12.)

the play producer, and it added a zest to existence.’ Life’ became. very. interesting when one listened to all’ the shades and .yarieties of . voices. There wis such a range of emotions, 80 many hundreds. of shades of ‘voice for éxcitement, joy and anger arid so on, "The voice changed under stiess. ND’ -character, too, wis just’ such an interesting study. One had to study the lines of a character ‘and visualise him as he was in real life. One had to get inside his mind and imagine how he would act in a given set of circumstances. Here, too, said the play producer, there was an endless source of interest. Different people, as one knew very well from life, would be affected by the same set of circumstances in different ways. One man, on getting news that shocked him terribly, might stand perfectly still, another might run away, a third might faint, One had to get inside the very brain of 2 character. OR all these different kinds of characters the play producer has to find the right voice. He may want a light. voice for the .part of a weak man or a voice with a crackle in it for the part of a harsh, determined man. They prefer to do as little. doubling of parts as possible in the NBS play productions. Too often in doubling the voice has the same quality or similar .inflexion running through it that betrays it to the listener and destroys the sense of illusion.. For that reason the play producer likes to give as many voices as possible a chance. He will give anyone who thinks he or she has a good radio play voice a test. As a rule he gets two or three tests to°'do a day. First he tries the actor on straight work to guage the quality and resonance of the voice..He does the part himself first,.finding one bit of demonstration worth a _ thousand explanations. He does not, however, want poll parrots who will merely give him a servile imitation of his own interpretation, but there must be certain accepted rules of pausation and inflexion. Above all he hates people just to say a part as if they are reading it. After the straight part he tests them out perhaps on a part which has necd of dramatic pressure behind the voice -in which the feeling in the mind of the character pushes through into the voice itself. Then he may ‘try them out in a part that needs quiet emotion or in a-part that needs a voice with the quality of a definite age-the voice of a young manor an old man. If they can do dialect, he will give them a Scotch, Irish, Yorkshire’ or Sockney part to try. He likes to hear them out in broken languages, if they can manage it. He is pleased to hear them in any part they may have particularly studied. After he has heard the voice, he assesses it up in his notebook in a tabulated system. He dogs his best to be honest with the actor, after the test. But every voice tested goes down in his book, for he may have’ something that just suits a ‘certain Character in some play,