Yesterday was hardly typical, and it was memorable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I had three freelance jobs that took me cross-town a couple of times through pouring rain and crazy traffic; Brisbane doesn’t respond well to the wet. The second was a confirmation (if I needed it) at day’s end that the business of voice and acting is not nearly as complicated as so many would have it. The workshop I did with a group of Year 12 Drama students at 8.30 that morning paralleled the voice-coaching work I did with a Hollywood actor later that afternoon. Both sessions came down to getting the whole body involved in realising thought and then connecting – fully and truthfully – on breath and through word … what else is there?

The other job yesterday was a screen test for a television commercial. Somewhere around lunchtime I found myself sitting in one of those hired waiting rooms in the suburbs with a whole lot of other hopefuls. I was reminded again as we sat there how important relaxation is to the business of auditioning – the least fair part of acting, as someone once said. Watching that room of actors was an object lesson in itself; some worked their phones, others listened to music, some stared into the middle distance. The tension was palpable.

My take on all this … I really believe that relaxation is almost impossible unless the actor possesses the mental freedom that comes from confidence. Confidence in turn, comes from knowing you are as prepared as you can be. Where that comes from takes us back to basics – realising thought and connecting, fully and truthfully on breath and through word – having the craft skills or a process to work from.

Still waiting for the results of the screen test … as always, no point in deliberating … moving right along. It was a chance to perform, to network, to extend experience in the business … the job would be bonus.

Hot on the heels of the free Hollywood Helper: Broadway Buddy, a neat lines-learning app for the iPhone that I wrote about some time ago, here’s Rehearsal from Sotto Voce Film+Works.  It’s also iPad ready!

Rehearsal, like HH/BB has also been designed by and for a working actor; you can just tell by the features that have been adapted from the way we work, e.g., the coloured marker approach to text markup as well as an annotation capacity.  Apart from their obvious mobile advantages, what these lines-learning apps for the iPhone do is to cut out the necessity for the long-suffering friend who has to sit for ages hearing your lines.

While HH/BB is text-oriented, Rehearsal is for those people who like to learn out-loud, and that’s something that I have always recommended to my students, and use myself. In fact, this app is just a nose ahead for me in terms of optimising learning since it also incorporates the on-board recording capability of the iPhone – nice if you want to work ‘silently’ as well.

The learning process built into both apps is very similar.  You upload your script, then break it down into scenes for convenience.  You can highlight your lines, and annotate on the text or in the margins.  When you are in rehearsal mode you tap a ‘black-out’ button to hide your lines.  You get your cues only, but if you get stuck, you just tap the blacked out section and a hint appears.

Rehearsal adds a couple of features not found in HH/BB.  First, it’s how you highlight the text for your lines.  You choose a colour ‘marker’ from an on-screen selection, and use your finger to highlight lines or words.  There is also an ‘eraser’; you just select it and then tap the individual highlighted line or word, and they disappear – touch screen magic at work!  Secondly, you can add an image or an audio file to your scene if you wish; this is in addition to the text notes capacity.

Rehearsal really comes into its own though through its voice features.  After you’ve uploaded and prepared the scene you’re working on you then record all the text on the iPhone. Rehearsal suggests that you ‘half-voice’ your own lines so that in playback mode they are fainter but still audible. The idea is to listen to your ‘scene partner,’ getting used to your cues, then speaking over your own pre-recorded lines.   It’s the repeat, repeat, repeat method aka rote learning that you use to nail your lines DLP (dead-letter perfect).  You can then listen back to hear how you’re going and, at the same time, follow the lines.  This is great to check speech clarity and for progress on dialect and accent study.

In the early repeat sessions you are working to the rhythm and the tempo of the recording, but this changes when live rehearsals take over – and of course, you can always re-record; in fact you should be doing so as the learning process with its accumulation of rehearsal discoveries will inevitably alter your lines-reading. When you are ready, just tap to ‘black-out’ your lines.  As well as those of others, you will, of course, still hear your own lines sotto voce unless you have left them out of a subsequent recording.  I really like the graded learning steps that Rehearsal provides.  By the way, you can keep all of your recording sessions (dated and named as you wish) to check on progress; I can see the benefit when you are working on a dialect or accent in a role.

Something I really like is a special feature for voice actors. Again , you upload the script, and from here can record a demo to send on to the client or studio; it’s emailed on as an mp3 attachment directly from your iPhone. You can use the excellent voice app on the iPhone or add a microphone if you prefer. There are even the three standard stand-by ‘beeps’ so you can record for time if you wish.  It’s all very smooth indeed!

The Nuts and Bolts:
Rehearsal is free for the first week with unlimited uploads of scripts. You have to register your email and details straight from your iPhone to get the account. After that just email your scripts as word or pdf docs attachments to a special email address you get from Rehearsal. After the week’s free trial is up, you can choose to upload per script, per month, or per year. Right now that’s $US1.99 per script and $US19.99 for unlimited monthly uploads or $199.99 unlimited annual. Oh, and they send a sweet little email hoping you ‘break a leg’ every time you upload a script. This isn’t cheesy at all; we need all the help we can get!

I’m not all that keen on the name of this handy little iPhone app: ‘Hollywood Helper – Broadway Buddy’ – yuk!   ‘Lines Coach’ is plain, but it might well have served for an application that helps you to learn lines without your script, and which also understands how most actors work with pencil and paper.  HH/BB also takes a familar approach to lines-learning as action through intention. Despite my quibbles on the name, I like it very much and suspect that an acting coach worked with the developers to bring it to the iPhone.  The nice people who make this little iPhone app thought I might like to take it for a spin, and so I did. Here’s my take on it, with a recommendation.

HH/BB downloads as do all iPhone apps directly from the iTunes Store. It’s free – that’s the first of the nice things about it. It comes pre-loaded with Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ as a .txt file so you can play around for a while to get used to the features. When the time comes to upload the script you’re working on you will need to convert the pages of your script to .txt format, presumably by scanning them or converting from another digital file format like .doc. This is easily done on your computer. Uploading is done via WiFi. Detailed instructions are here.

Once you upload, the way you use the app is straightforward and fairly intuitive.  Check the screen shots above.  The home screen contains two clickable buttons ‘Script’ and ‘Setup.’  You will want to click on Setup and choose the character to rehearse by typing in the name. HH/BB will ask you whether you want to search for the name as ‘ALL CAPS’ or ‘as-is.’  ALLCAPS is the default formatting of character in most scripts, while ‘as is’ would reference any mentions of the name.  This could be handy if you wish to see what other characters are saying about you, or to find your character mentioned in any stage directions, or, of course if your character is not referenced in block caps.

You then choose to work in Learn or Rehearse mode.  In Learn, you get the pages of the script with your character’s lines highlighted; in Rehearse, your character’s lines are blocked out but you can see the rest.  You tap on the blocked section for a ‘hint’ – a word, phrase etc., similar to the way a good DSM will shout out a key phrase to jog an actor when s/he is off book.

The Setup screen also has a myVerbs clickable button that gives you a preloaded alphabetical listing of verbs.   You can add as many as you like to the list.   Verbs is a very useful feature for actors who like to think in terms of their lines as action-playing.  Look at a lot of actors’ scripts and you will often see a verb in the margin e.g., ‘assert’ or ‘blame.’ This feature comes in handy when you are working on script – HH/BB replicates this feature – more on this below.

There are a couple of other buttons on the home screen for Setup: ‘jump to start of script’ or ‘end of script’. This is useful if you have an entire playtext loaded up. Of course, the screens scroll as you would expect on an iPhone. The other button is ‘Change Script’ – if you are working on a couple of scripts, for example, and want to switch.

Now you’re set up you can tap on ‘Script’ on the home screen and start learning or rehearsing.

Two excellent little features in both modes are the ‘prev’ and ‘next’ buttons which appear in the right margin of the screen – tapping either of these takes you to the next or previous bit of text for your character. The other really useful feature is the ‘subtxt’ button. Tap ‘subtxt’ and a green box opens up; tap this and the iPhone keyboard appears. You can now type in a phrase to summarise or perhaps to paraphrase a piece of text. Tap the mainscreen when finished and the keyboard disappears; the subtext remains. Nice! Actors familiar with Jack Poggi’s approach to text-learning in The Monologue Workshop will find this useful. Type in the summary phrase or word for the text using subtxt. By then using the prev and next features you can scroll through the script and get an outline of the ‘spine’ of the scene’s action – really helpful as part of the lines/action learning in a scene.

You will also see the ‘verb’ button in the screen’s right margin. Tap this and your listing of verbs appears. Scroll to select the one that fits your chosen action-intention for the particular piece of text, tap it, save and it will appear in red the text margin, as it might if you had written it in to your script. You can, of course, change it later on as you work on and refine your lines-learning.

HH/BB is very useful, very portable, and just the thing to show how terribly, terribly cool you are in the rehearsal room, on the bus, over coffee etc. Both thumbs up.