University 's Production The Boys From Syracuse

“On Broadway, although some female roles are narrow, demeaning, passive, or long-suffering and convey weakness, the performer sings with incredible strength. Listening to the female singing voice is a more complicated phenomenon. Visually, the character singing is the passive object of our gaze. But aurally, she is resonant; her musical speech drowns out everything in range. A singer, more than any other musical performer, stands before us having wrested the composing voice away from the lyricist and composer who wrote the score.” Said Musicologist Carolyn Abbate (Wolf, p.31)

All their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine…. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny…. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

Yes, this character was very successful with his vocal choices. The range of his vocal tone within each scene added depth to his character. For example, when he confronts Jackie about their relationship, he softens his voice to show his pain, but also strengthens it to illustrate that his pain also comes from a place of anger.

In the moment, my abilities never faltered. I kind of like that about myself. I may worry, but when it comes down to it, I’m pretty persevering. Despite this, I harbored mixed feelings about singing again.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was done wonderfully and quite entertaining. While a musical about a spelling bee does not sound like the most exciting thing to watch, the performances by each actor provided a great atmosphere for the production. Going into the play, I was expecting it to be a kid’s show, which kids would enjoy the musical but may not quite get all of the jokes. The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee was more aimed at adults. Every adult that was watching the play, myself included, was rolling out of their seats. The play managed to be engaging and funny throughout the entire play. Within the play, each actor has a different background story. Each actor in the play, plays a big role and stood out in their own specific way. Also, this specific play differs from the other plays we have seen but it has few similarities.

Then the practicing part came and I had some challenges with my song. I don’t have very good breathing control and the song is hard on breathing. I got better in that by practicing. But this still challenges me. Also, I had problems with hitting the right notes, sometimes I was singing Amy’s alto parts, but she always alerted me so that was good.

Dialog was the first sound recorded, there was quite a lot of dialog involved and it would need to be recorded at the right level as it will be the loudest part of the sequence. When recording vocals I set up the microphone appropriately, this meant positioning the microphone at roughly the same height as my chin. The microphone also needed to be close to my mouth, if I was too far away it wouldn’t be loud enough meaning the volume would have to be amplified which would also amplify all the unwanted noises around. A pop filter was also used, I simply moved it into the correct position before saying my lines. A pop filter is used to stop the popping noise that can be accompanied by saying certain letters such as p. Once the microphone was set up the lines were recorded, this was helped by having a TV playing the video so I could get my timings perfected. One issue that did occur was putting the emotion into certain sections, I found this hard at first as the recordings came out stale with no feeling. To fix this I redid the dialog a few times and tried to treat it more as acting than speaking. The final sections of dialog came out much better than the previous but there is still clear room for improvement when it comes to the

At first I could barely project my voice for the entire hornline to hear, I was always self conscious and afraid of messing up. My public speaking skills were questionable at best and my fear of messing up in front of everyone made them even worse. Dealing with my eight person section(including myself) wasn’t as taxing but relaying instructions effectively was my biggest problem. Teaching new material as well as

Cypress Lake High School presented a night full of performances by vocal majors and vocal minors. Being the Fall Cabaret one can look forward to a year filled with talented voices filling the school auditorium.

I never sang too loud so if I messed up, no one would hear it .After every class I would go up to my Choir or band director with about five questions. But it simply was not enough. So my sophomore year I was given vocal lessons that taught me that I can match pitch consistently , and that my range was bigger than I ever thought it could be. I discovered a talent that I loved and I intended to perfect it .I performed in multiple cabarets and had the opportunity to sing with my choir at the Carnegie music hall. I was finally getting the swing of music; but that was not enough due to my obstinacy. I wanted to learn

I think this will help me grow as an actor by making me step out of my comfort zone and be loose onstage. The challenges provided by the accent and text will help me grow since I’m not used to something so extreme. This monologue is a great opportunity to be this wacky character and make bold choices.

Singing and acting are something that is always hard to do because many of them tend to get tired, so you can tell by their voice, but during this show I did not see that at all. They were very professional and it seemed like they have been doing this for a while. The message of the show “Into The Woods” has always been a controversy. Many believe that it is for Adults, not children because there we a good amount of scene that should not be seen my children. There are complex moral questions that force the audience to face their beliefs about the fairy tales they grew up with and in which they placed the value of “right” and “wrong” are relatively close to the concept of “good” and

With the actors energized and compelling, they embodied their characters physically, vocally, and emotionally. The physical gestures made the actors more active and mobile. Their vocals made the performance very projective, and the musical numbers

The play was also easy to follow because though there were only two actors portraying so many characters, the plot was relatively simple. The play was centered around a radio station and the individual character’s stories stemmed out from the station. This gave all the characters a common relation, which made the play easier to understand than if they all were connected in different ways. Additionally, the characters were extremely strong because of the actor’s ability to transition mannerisms, accents and costumes. For example, when Lauren Roos was playing the grandma she took tiny steps that made the audience laugh because it looked like she was moving slowly like an older person. Additionally, when Kevin Cavallaro was playing Didi Snavely, he completely changes his whole persona and transferred into her character extremely well. I thought that Lauren Roos and Kevin Cavallaro were both extremely comical and I cannot pick whom I liked more. I thought Lauren Roos proved that females can be successful in comedy because of her ability to make both male and female characters funny, despite the assumption that females cannot pull of

The main characters of the play, Hannah and Martin, had strong and successful performances in terms of their body movements, chemistry, and portrayal of their characters. Ali Basalyga, the actress portraying Hannah, was excellent in demonstrating Hannah’s transition from an awkward, shy, and self-conscious young girl in the beginning of the play, to becoming dominant and powerful at the end of the play. While most of the actors did their characters justice, there were some minor faults that seemed to stick out like sore thumbs. In terms of vocal quality and articulation, for example, Basalyga definitely stuck out--her occasional fast speech and slurred words caused sentences to pass, unheard by the audience. Had she spoken slower at times, her role would have been more understandable and therefore, more powerful. I have seen other plays in the past, “The Glass Menagerie”, for example, in which Basalyga also portrayed the main character, and again, articulation proved to a problem for her. One character that did not add to the success of the production was Gertrude Jaspers, portrayed by Emily Paparazzo. Paparazzo’s soft tone of voice and perceived shyness to be on stage, made it virtually impossible to hear what she was saying for minutes at a time. Her movements on stage were awkward and