Introduction

For this performance project, our selected production is the musical Wonderful Town. Set in 1930s New York, the story follows two sisters, Ruth and Eileen, who move from Ohio to Greenwich Village to pursue their artistic dreams. Eileen dreams of becoming an actress, while Ruth aspires to be a writer. However, their life in the city quickly becomes more difficult than expected, as they face financial pressure, complicated relationships, and a series of unpredictable events.

During the rehearsal process, I learned about “how to use changes in voice and body to show different characters.” I was fortunate to be cast in two roles—”Ruth” and “Mrs. Wade”—which are completely different in age, personality, and reasons for coming to Greenwich Village. This gave me an excellent opportunity to experience the power of vocal and physical transformation. Additionally, in this performance project, I once again deeply felt the charm of collaboration on stage.

This portfolio will focus on the research and reflection of my performance development in this project, with particular emphasis on analyzing my process of shaping the character Ruth and the insights I gained from it.

Early individual practice

When preparing for the audition for the first time, I was immediately attracted to Ruth’s song One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man. When I listened to it for the first time, I thought she was a somewhat “neurotic,”  and confident woman. Moreover, this was a completely swing piece, which I had never had the opportunity to encounter in my previous studies. This greatly increased my desire to audition for this role. However, when I actually started learning the song, difficulties arose. Due to my lack of experience, I could not quite grasp the swing style. I easily sang it as regular dotted notes,losing the swinging feeling that the song originally had. I tried many methods to solve this problem, including practicing repeatedly, listening to audio recordings, and often listening to music of the same style, but something was still missing. Just when I was worried about not finding a solution, a turning point appeared.One day, I suddenly had an idea to record a video of myself singing for study. I was surprised to discover that my body was so stiff while singing swing—my legs were standing straight, and my hands were even firmly placed on my waist to support stable breathing. How much like a sculpture! I realized that I was just singing rather than performing the song. I decisively adjusted my approach, shifting my focus from fear of singing the dotted notes incorrectly to studying the meaning of the song’s expression and interpreting the character’s psychological state. As a result, I found the natural sarcastic and communicative sense in the rhythm of the lyrics, and I sang out the confidence and playfulness that the character should have.

For example, here: “ he whispers, ‘you’re the one to whom I give my heart.’ Don’t say, “I love you, too, my dear let’s never, never part.’” The relationship between the lyrics and the notes in this line is very close. The melodic direction of “he whispers, ‘you’re the one…’” and “I love you, too” both go upward, and the highest notes happen to match the stressed words in these two phrases. I think that if I sang according to the meaning of the lyrics, adding tone and an attitude of wanting to mock the other person, the swing feeling would naturally appear. This is actually the conversational quality that musical theatre values very much.

The image shows an excerpt from the song.

Speaking of conversational quality, a second difficulty appeared. Since English is my second language, I could not find the most precise feeling of speaking when delivering lines, even though I knew the meaning of the sentence. In this song, in order to express Ruth’s fast speaking speed and her special confidence in the field of “losing men,” there are many very quick fragments similar to inner monologues. They jump out from the melody of the song and form a part completely different to the previous swing melody. To highlight this contrast, I started by imitating the original singer, this left a very good initial impression in my mind. However, this kind of stroke-by-stroke imitation was like wood under an exquisite mask—it seemed to express all the emotions, but the inner feelings were not strong enough to support it. A few days later, a teacher helped me solve this confusion. Her tip was to translate the language into your first language, read it aloud on the basis of full understanding, and then you would quickly and precisely find the feeling that this sentence needed to be shaped. Repeat reading aloud like this until the whole body, including inner rhythm and body language, has fully adapted, and then switch back to English. At this moment, you would suddenly find that the character’s language feeling could now appear naturally. Finally, as long as you improve the fluency of the English lines, the situation of “pretending to express” would not occur.This was actually a question of whether you truly understood the sentence and whether you had strong psychological reasons to support you when speaking these words. When I speak my mother tongue, my body expresses subconsciously according to the context, so the rhythm, stress, and pause shown at that moment are all correct. I could also naturally show Ruth’s exaggeration, confidence, and disdain for men’s little tricks, rather than just speaking fast to catch up with the words.

Later, I successfully got the role of Ruth and began to deeply study this character. It was also at this stage that I deeply understood how to use changes in voice and body to highlight the characteristics of a character. In this musical, Ruth and her sister Eileen have great differences in personality and the way they deal with people and things. Eileen often appears as a confident and innocent figure, but Ruth is a carefree, optimistic person who is somewhat impulsive towards people and things. Therefore, in the song ,I wanted to choose a special tone color to interpret her. First, her voice cannot be the delicate and beautiful head voice “legit”; it must be that kind of chest voice which is somewhat aggressive and has a straight tone color,so “twang” tone color is the good choice. This can not only show Ruth’s sarcasm towards men’s self-righteous behavior and her extreme confidence in this field to the greatest extent, but also show her casual and even sometimes somewhat “vulgar” personality traits. Second, in terms of rhythm, after many attempts, I finally chose a singing method that “breaks the original rhythm,” such as sometimes being “slightly ahead” and sometimes “laid back.” Firstly, I wanted this song to have more conversational quality when singing. This is originally a song teaching others how to get rid of men, and there will be many plot performances and true expressions of the character’s inner thoughts in the middle. Therefore, adding “conversational quality” means singing like daily communication, adding some reasonable pauses or strong beats due to emotional ups and downs, which can also more vividly experience Ruth’s various moods when expressing her ideas. The second reason I chose to change the singing rhythm is because of Ruth’s personality. She is sometimes impatient and impulsive. When encountering things that make her particularly speechless and angry, she is easily annoyed. Mapped to the singing, that means the voice and rhythm sometimes get out of control, and the tone color immediately produces a squeezed feeling. So changing the singing rhythm can give her more space to confidently and fully express herself. For me, it is not about singing randomly, but a kind of controlled unrefinement.

For example, in this line: “He says, ‘The next man up at bat will bunt, you’ll see.’ Don’t say, ‘Ooh, what’s a bunt? This game’s too hard for little me.’” This singing part is particularly typical for me, because I wanted to play both the man and the woman being dated in this sentence. This required two different changes in tone color, including imitating the low voice of a man showing off and the innocent voice of a woman completely charmed. So I chose to break the rhythm of the song and sing in a completely performative way, but this actually expressed Ruth’s understanding and disdain for this kind of man, as well as her complete confidence in her ability to lose men.

The image shows an excerpt from the song.

In terms of tone color choice, for Mrs. Wade, I chose to use a low, stable, highly controlled tone with some head resonance, which is different from Ruth. Because she is an old lady, a woman who believes she has knowledge and good manners, and behaves very properly in front of others. Since Mrs. Wade has no singing parts, only spoken dialogue, I need to portray this educated lady’s image in just a few sentences during conversation. I will not casually raise my volume, and certainly will not use my voice to suppress my scene partner. What I need to do is only to articulate clearly but not drag on, and keep my breath stable, so that I can better interpret an elderly person.

Collaboration phase

When the preliminary preparation work was almost finished, it finally came to the time to rehearse with everyone, which also let me once again feel that good cooperation can achieve more with less effort. At the beginning, my physical movements for Ruth were not accurate; I was somewhat too stiff when speaking and delivering lines. This might be because it was my first time rehearsing properly with the cast ，so I was a bit nervous. However, this completely contradicted Ruth’s personality traits and the setting where this dialogue took place. Later, under the guidance and help of the student in charge of directing, I found the appropriate physicality for Ruth, and deeply realized how much a good scene partner can influence one’s performance.

The scene where this dialogue takes place is when Ruth has just returned from interviewing Brazilian sailors. These sailors, who cannot understand English and only know three words—”American,” “Dance,” and “Conga”—have followed her back. Ruth is in a hurry to find her sister to complain and ask for help. At the beginning of rehearsals, there were no real “Brazilian sailors” on stage causing trouble; the whole time I was imagining talking to them and their reactions. This made my body language and speech rhythm very “acted.” Later we adjusted the plan and actually kept a few “Brazilian sailors” on stage. It was this real feedback that allowed me to receive it immediately during rehearsal and make genuine reactions right away. Additionally, their reactions were timely yet reasonable, so they also brought me many new inspirations, helping me break out of rigid performance logic and making all the dialogue come alive.

For example, in the initial discussion of the plan, we decided to have Ruth run onto the stage, say goodbye to the sailors, and then immediately complain to her sister Eileen. However, there had never been a reasonable logic supporting me to complete this series of actions. But with the addition of the sailors, I suddenly had an idea. At that moment, Ruth could be on her way trying to run away from the sailors. Just when she thought the task was complete, she turned around and found there was still a group of people following her, which then triggered the subsequent series of dialogue and complaints. I also found suitable body language for my character within this logic. I chose more exaggerated and rough movements; during the performance, you would often see me waving my arms, putting my hands on my hips, and showing complete collapse and impatience after the sailors completely misunderstood my meaning. Then, in places where the sailors could not see, I would secretly punch and kick them. Later, I added several physical characteristics including leaning my neck forward, shifting my center of gravity forward, and making my breathing shallower, which more vividly highlighted Ruth’s angry, impatient, and unstable state at that time. As Sanford Meisner said, “Acting is the reality of doing” (Meisner, 1987, p. 16). These are all sparks that can only be created through rehearsing on stage, only by truly living on stage, listening to your scene partner speak, watching your scene partner move, and then immediately reacting with your body, can you bring a character to life.

Later, Neysa and I also arranged a separate rehearsal. The original intention was to run through the dialogue and songs for the first time, but during this collaboration, we unexpectedly created some fun blocking for my song . The song’s plot setting is that I am frustrated because I cannot get rid of the Brazilian sailors, but in my own worldview, I am the most professional expert at losing men, so I am teaching my sister Eileen various methods to shake off men. Before this collaboration, my idea might have been that I sing alone at the front while my sister sits on a stool listening beside me. However, Neysa gave many particularly clever ideas to integrate Eileen into Ruth’s teaching, rather than being a bystander. Ruth taught the methods with great effort while acting them out, and although Eileen was very helpless about being suddenly pulled over to learn, she would instinctively be attracted by the plot or angered by these strange tricks. We immediately agreed on this plan. Subsequently, based on this inspiration and my own understanding of the plot, I choreographed a short dance sequence and integrated it into the song. This was used to highlight Ruth’s extreme confidence in her ability to lose men, and to show a very clever point: perhaps Ruth herself did not realize that although she hated those Brazilian sailors who could not understand “English,” she had already been influenced by these passionate conga dances and gradually chose to open herself up. The appearance of these creative ideas not only enriched the stage but also reinforced the different personality traits of the two sisters.

In terms of collaboration, this was undoubtedly successful and meaningful. Before this idea was made reasonable, none of us knew what this work would be like. This was clearly an unsafe collaborative environment, but neither of us held back our opinions and ideas. Regardless of right or wrong, we just tried them out first, and found the most reasonable solution through continuous trying and discussion. This is exactly the pattern mentioned by Davis Robinson in ensemble devising structures—”Tossed in the pool together.” Completing collaboration within limited time, no one would know how the collaboration would proceed, but everyone chose to accept and then put forward their own ideas until the work became reasonable. Under this model, we successfully created a work that belonged to both of us, and found the joy of collaboration in the process.

Official performance

Actually, standing on the real stage to perform feels different from rehearsing in the classroom. Some control over performance details and the completeness of the work can only truly be seen on stage. Since this performance was without microphones, how much information the audience could receive entirely depended on the actors’ own energy. When I moved the song blocking and my singing state from the classroom rehearsals onto the stage unchanged, my teacher’s feedback was: good, but not big enough. Here, “big” means two things. First, my voice was not loud enough for the audience sitting in the last row to hear. Second, my facial expressions and emotional state were not big enough. This is a large stage; if the emotional state cannot be fully expressed, it is easily “swallowed” by the entire stage, and naturally the audience cannot feel it. I think that to judge whether an actor is good or not, see if they can infect the entire theatre audience. Here, “infect” means whether the actor can fully convey their energy to the audience and achieve resonance with them.

Previously, my understanding of this was particularly shallow. I thought that as long as I used genuine emotions, the audience would naturally feel them. However, this performance without microphones truly made me understand that I need to amplify all my states to 120 percent on the basis of understanding the character and enjoying the performance. Firstly, in terms of voice, I needed to use more breath and diaphragm support. This can project the voice to the greatest extent under the premise of healthy voice use. Secondly, and most importantly, the amplification of emotion and body, including the mouth shape when speaking and the degree of exaggerated facial expressions. Because the actor’s emotions are not for themselves to see, but for the audience.

When all the details about the character were prepared, the performance project officially began. However, due to the combination of various factors, we did not have a complete dress rehearsal at the performance venue even once. So before the performance, I felt particularly uncertain in my heart. I worried about forgetting my entrances ,dance moves, and even lyrics. I stood stiffly backstage like this, at this moment, a classmate saw me and gave me a big hug. She said, “It’s okay, I believe this project will be especially good, because everyone has been working hard all along.” I felt the power of support, and I chose to believe in every person in our group. My anxious heart gradually calmed down. The performance was completed smoothly, and on stage with my scene partner, sparks flew that had never appeared in the rehearsal hall. From this, I felt immense sense of achievement and collective honor, as well as a deeper understanding of the problems within myself and the creativity that collaboration brings.

Reflection and Summary

Actually, I have always been able to feel that nervousness is a big problem for me. Whether it was this performance or the audition at the beginning of previous projects, I almost failed to perform at my best state because of nervousness. I carefully thought about the underlying reason for this emotion. It is actually that I care too much about this thing. I hope that every time I go on stage, there will be no flaws at all. But this is like an invisible shackle that firmly binds my performance. Including the physical stiffness when learning the song at the very beginning, it was because I tried to sing every note and rhythm perfectly, but instead made the song lose its performative quality. After this experience, I decided to let go of myself, because no performance can achieve one hundred percent perfection. However, I can achieve one hundred percent enjoyment of the character and the stage.

In terms of collaboration, this time was also particularly surprising to me. Because as a theatre performance, there are many uncontrollable factors, including technical aspects, the audience, all of which may cause the performance effect to be different from that in the rehearsal hall. But good collaboration can turn uncontrollable factors into new creativity. The actors actively exchanged with each other on stage, making the originally monotonous stage blocking become interesting, and also making the performance more real on the basis of being reasonable.

This is, literally, the first complete musical theatre segment I have performed on stage since coming to study in the UK. From the audition to the final performance, I have devoted myself to the creative process. I have learned a lot and also found problems that have long existed in me. I hope I can continue to invest in my future studies with the experience I have learned and the solutions I have found.

Bibliography

Robinson, D. (2015) A Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising. London: Red Globe Press.

Meisner, S. and Longwell, D. (1987) Sanford Meisner on acting. New York: Vintage Books.