Audacity reading and blog
Although I am not an experienced theatrical reader, I mirrored Elizabeth Klett in attempting to bring the characters to life with my voice while introducing my own judgments and decisions into how the novel should be read, and in doing so I gained respect for anyone who reads entire novels out loud.
I focused on Chapter 9 of Northanger Ab bey, by Jane Austen, and read for about 10 minutes. One of the first things the audience may notice is that I chose to not use an English accent. Although I quite enjoyed listening to the accent in Elizabeth Klett’s version, I felt that if I focused my efforts on perfecting an accent that was not my native one, I would not be able to do justice to the other aspects of the reading. I decided that it was more important to put effort in to the different character voices and pronunciation then a false accent.
The opening two minutes of my reading are all narration, since I started from the beginning of the chapter. It was very difficult for me to get a grasp on reading condensed and thick paragraphs like that. I stumbled over words, couldn’t pronounce many of them, and had to pause and re-record my narration many times.
One of the things that struck me the most about the difference between listening to the novel read to me and reading it to someone else was noticing the long sentences for the first time. Before I started reading aloud, I did not notice the seemingly run-on sentences separated by many comas that spanned multiple lines before ending. It often seemed as though there were two or three different ideas in one single sentence, which made it very difficult to plan on how to read it out loud. For example,
“This, on arriving in Pulteney Street, took the direction
of extraordinary hunger, and when that was appeased,
changed into an earnest longing to be in bed; such was
the extreme point of her distress; for when there
she immediately fell into a sound sleep which lasted
nine hours, and from which she awoke perfectly revived,
in excellent spirits, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes. “ –Chap. 9
In this single sentence you learn Catherine arrived in a certain location, she was hungry and ate, got tired, was distressed, fell asleep for a specific amount of time, and woke up happy again. It was difficult for me to figure out a way to read sentences such as these without sounding scatter-brained or confusing my audience.
Another interesting dilemma for me was deciding which adjectives to stress during the long-winded sentences. For example, in the following sentence I bolded which words I attempted to emphasize to give meaning to the narration.
“In the pump-room, one so newly arrived in Bath must
be met with, and that building she had already found
so favourable for the discovery of female excellence,
and the completion of female intimacy, so admirably adapted
for secret discourses and unlimited confidence, that she
was most reasonably encouraged to expect another friend from
within its walls.” –Chap. 9
Austen tends to use many adjectives throughout her writing, so I enjoyed the freedom of being able to pick and choose which ones I wanted to emphasize.
Soon after came the description of Mrs. Allen. I struggled with the word ‘commoded’ and did not know the proper pronunciation of the word. I stumbled over it in both my test-trails and still messed it up in the final recording.
After this description, I really got into the reading. I tried my best to put a lively spin on the descriptions of what was happening because the narrative had gone on for so long I was afraid listeners were going to get bored. For instance, I tried putting a lot of emotion and suspense behind the words ‘At about half past twelve, a remarkably loud rap drew her in haste to the window’ to get the listeners excited about what they were about to find out.
The first voice that I had to theatrically read was John Thorpe’s. In listening to Klett’s interpretation of him, I realized she did a fantastic job of making him sound pompous and arrogant with just his vocal cords. Even if what he had been saying was sweet and non-Thorpe-like, if read in that tone of voice I still would have believed him to be self-important and a frustrating person to interact with. I tried to bring those same qualities alive in my voice when I read his part. I lowered my voice, to sound more like a man, and spoke in a very short and direct manner. I wanted it to feel like he was aggressively asserting himself on you with every sentence he spoke.
Luckily for me, the first sentence of Thorpe’s in Chapter 9 was very relevant to the type of character I was attempting to portray him as. He said “Well, Miss Morland, here I am,” which couldn’t have been a more perfect and telling opening line. During the same speech I noticed that he drove his attention away for a moment onto Mrs. Allen, asking how she was and an additional question about the ball the night before, but before she could even respond he had already turned his focus on to Catherine telling her to hurry up. I tried to convey this act by making the portion to Mrs. Allen for rushed and quiet, before I immediately leapt back into talking to Catherine as though my speech to her caregiver had never happened.
The very next sentence was the first one I would speak as Catherine. I tried to pause while transitioning between characters, as Klett did. I found this really helped me follow along with who was speaking when she was the one reading, and I hope it helped my listeners as well.
I made Catherine’s voice softer and mildly appeasing, but I tried not to give her as much of an innocent and naïve voice as Klett did. While I do believe those are prominent traits Catherine possesses, I found it rather annoying to listen to someone that sounded immature and dumb. I also tried to give him for life than I thought Klett did. I think Klett was so concerned with making her seem agreeable and young that she didn’t possess any character whatsoever. This, honestly, may have been Austen’s intention. But I wanted Catherine to have more of a strong character. This is why I said “I really didn’t expect you” in a way that made it clear Thorpe was out of line, rather than the way Klett said the same line which made me think that Catherine was worried she had forgotten her engagement.
I only spoke one line as Mrs. Allen, but I tried to do my best impression of an older lady voice. I made her voice seem jumpy by putting random inflections of tone in it, just as I believe her train of thought is.
The voice I was the most excited about was Isabella. Out of all the characters in the novel, she seemed the most interesting and complex to me. I was constantly trying to figure out her motives and what her intention for everyone may be, which was a welcomed difference from Catherine’s simple minded approach to all the events that happened to her. Again, I was gifted with the perfect opening line of “My dearest creature!” from her. She is so full of life and expression that I knew I had to do her reading in the same way. But at the same time, I also wanted her to seem like the stereotypical legally blonde type girl. I believe that if this was present day, that would be the type of person she would be.
I made her voice fast-paced, flighty and tried to emphasize nearly everything she said. I believe that Isabella would think everything she said was important, and I wanted to convey the voice of someone who wanted everyone to hear all the important things they had to say.
Again came a long paragraph I semi-stumbled through. I was surprised at how tired my voice was getting just from reading out loud. One of the sentences I particularly attempted to say well was “Everything being then arranged, the servant who stood at the horse’s head was bid in an important voice “to let him go,” and off they went in the quietest manner imaginable.” I really tried to distinguish my narrative voice from Thorpe’s in this sentence and transitioned them smoothly.
The final part was when my knowledge of the characters and how I chose to interpret their voices came into play. It was a back-and-forth dialogue between Catherine and Thorpe in his open-carriage. I tried to make her voice astonished by his questions and descriptions, but I thought a telling line for her was “I cannot believe it.” In Klett’s version this was read as almost flirty and astounded because she took it as being true, but I wanted to be consistent with how I saw Catherine’s character and made this the only point in the chapter that she stood up for herself. And a few lines later when Catherine is described by the took as saying something ‘warmly’ I took that to mean heatedly and forcefully rather than with a soft and amiable emotion.
I chose to end at the end of that dialogue because the chapter continued for a while and I already had 10 minutes of recording my own voice. I couldn’t know exactly how many pages I had read since I don’t own the book, I just listened to it on audio, but I estimated it was more than enough.
The experience of reading aloud is much different than being read to. In both situations you must find a quiet and peaceful place and dedicate your time to the novel, but that’s about where the comparisons end for me. I was embarrassed for my roommates to hear me reading aloud and made sure to do it at a time when they were all in class or not at the house. I also wasn’t able to follow along as well as I was listening to someone else read, which is an interesting phenomenon. Even though I had listened to Chapter 9, pre-read the parts I was going to read aloud, and practiced twice before I actually recorded myself, I found it annoying hard to follow along with the long sentence structure.
I liked listening to the novel much better than recording it myself. When all of your attention is focused on one thing, such as someone’s voice, it’s easier to absorb a story rather than when you’re concerning yourself with the inflection of your voice, character transitions, audio frequencies, and reading off your computer all at the same time.
Reading aloud did give me a new perceptive and appreciation for theatrical readers however. I would never be able to do it professionally, but I never acknowledged how much work it must be to constantly make all these important character decisions without being able to consult the author. How you speak for a character can completely change the way they are perceived, so you have almost as much power as the author.
Audacity was tough for me to figure out, and no matter what I did I wasn’t able to get my voice to be louder on the converted mp3 file. I was nearly shouting at my computer to no affect. I hope that my tone of voice and inflection can still be heard over the low sound bites of my computer.