While this article contains many of the techniques that an actor may use, it is by no means the whole sum of what an actor does with speech. I am sure that you can think of many more examples, as all acting must be thought of as a piece and not a series of processes which you apply one after another.

INFLECTION

The way we vary speech to convey an exact meaning; the voice and speech moving, the note rising or falling, loud, soft, or in-between. Variation of speed, rhythm and use of pause, from the tiny beat to the long deliberate pause, when you want the audience to think. Subtle differences of articulation when someone is speaking precisely and also speaking flowingly and naturally.

STRESS WORDS

The more natural the speaking, the more calm the mood, the fewer words are stressed. The same can apply to emotion-laden speech of great importance. Two movie stars playing the dialogue leading up to the shoot-out in a really fine Western are going to stress very little, and speak evenly and laconically. Heroes and villains always do. The guy who is too emphatic is usually the one who gets shot. The actor's aim is only to stress or emphasise the essential words to convey the meaning. Over-stressing is a device used by bad actors to get a laugh out of an audience of foreigners. The aim of all stress is to make sense of meaning and emotion in the right way for the scene and situation.

TOPPING

Taking over the line of the dialogue, either by picking up the point, or interrupting the line of thought.

".....I insist you repect my freedom....." .

"I DO RESPECT YOUR FREEDOM.....".

The actors top by coming in louder or with greater intensity, perhaps faster, and by timing exactly. It's a piece of vocal agility.

PHRASING AND TEMPO

'Phrasing', like 'Rhythm' is one of those words that directors like to use when they haven't the faintest idea how the actor should convey meaning, but they hope he will somehow stumble across it. Phrasing is part of inflection, finding the smallest groups of words that belong together, and relating them to the rest of what is being said:- "However/ when they told him/ I was going to challenge/ him to a dual/ his integrity/ didn't hinder his cowardice....".

Tempo is an overall effect of pace. The tension in the scene from The Caretaker is created by tempo; Mick is in charge of time, and can speak when he wants to, can keep Davies waiting, or rush and hassle him. In the scene from The Seagull, the tempo is first careful and reflective, but gradually accelerates during the conversation to the climax at the end -- "MISER!" "RAGBAG!"

Similarly in the one-act play The Proposal by Chekov there is a great temptation to give too much too soon.

LAUGHTER

Probably the hardest first entrance an actor can be asked to make is to enter, laughing heartily. There's some comfort if it has to be done with other actors, in that there is safety in numbers, but solo laughter can be a martyrdom.

The first thing to establish is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the actor's own emotions, just as seeming to be in a blind fury needs an actor in full control of his faculties, not an actor consumed with anger. A laughing actor is not amused by the lines which make his character laugh, as he's heard them again and again during rehearsals and performances: the cast have long since stopped chuckling over the funny lines (and what if they're not funny?).

So laughter is a brave and generous act, like warmth and relaxed smiling. Generations of directors have hissed "eyes and teeth" to thousands of actors who have been required to enter smiling brightly. Laughter is an explosive, sudden reaction, which most often appears to release a gale of emotion: sometimes it is laughter which is palpably false, or ironic, and so has an opposite meaning to true laughter, which must seem to be spontaneous.

Laughter is a mini-language, which merely by making those noises, can convey a multitude of states of mind and meanings, from the sibilant snigger of the dangerous nutter to the delightful spifflicated giggle of someone who dare not show her mirth, from the harsh laughter of cruel triumph to the roars of genuine honest mirth.

An actor in action is working very hard, whilst often appearing to be light hearted. at ease, physically relaxed. He or she is physically relaxed, the key to lightness and humour, and an actor and an actress playing a scene of delightful funny friendship and flirtation, full of varying kinds of laughter are playing the most technically demanding of dialogue: chortles, giggles and chuckles need to be as carefully timed as words.

Laughter communicates itself to the audience; an actor laughing invariably makes them laugh. Any kind of tension or nervousness is going to make laughing difficult, since the sound is produced by rapid pulsations of the diaphragm.

The vowel sound exercise is fairly well known, ie Ha He Ha Hoo etc. Take a deep breath and say hahahahahahah as rapidly as you can, then hohohohohohoh, followed by heheheheheheh and heeheeheeheeheeheeh. It sounds like a prescription for how to play characters in pantomine or caricature stage villains. The object of the exercise, which must be persistently worked on, is to make the diaphragm automatically responsive. Justa s the smile of the public figure flashes out when it's the hundredth hospital ward she'sopened this year.

Laughter has its own inflections: pitch, tempo, loudness and softness, so the actor must experiment with variety, as no two people laugh alike. It's a familiar stage trick to make sycophants and crawlers echo, sound for sound, the laughter of the person they are flattering.

Probably the greatest test of the 'laughter' is the 'laughing song' from opera or vaudeville, and the great vocal comedian Stan Freeberg has recorded a virtuoso number, rather unkindly titled 'I laughed at your wedding' where he uses just about every kind of laughter. It's utterly hilarious - I recommend every actor to have it in his collection and play it every three months.

So laughter is another adroit technical process requiring mastery of the machine, though by now you may be feeling that with such a solemn approach to the whole thing, you'll never be able to deliver the goods. As a celebrated great actor said to his gifted but earnest co-star, why don't you just try acting? The laughing actor's reward is in the sense of his own skill and that of his fellow actors, and in the laughter of the audience.

HUGH MORRISON

This brief excerpt was taken from the 2nd edition of Hugh Morrison's book 'ACTING SKILLS', published in 1998 by A & C Black of London

The references in the paragraphs headed, Phrasing and Tempo, are taken (a) from a scene in Harold Pinter's play 'The Caretaker', when the mysterious and possibly dangerous Mick has discovered a tramp, Davies (a Welshman) sleeping in his house, and (b) from a scene in Chekov's The Seagull, between Arkadina, a beautiful and celebrated actress and Konstantin her twenty five year old son, who wants to be a playwright.