When our director, Pauliina, contacted me in January about a play that Soup Troupe was considering producing and wrote to me "I think you would be pretty perfect for this play" (sic!) I got very humbled. Let me start by saying that I admire Pauliina for many reasons, but in particular for her theatrical achievements. I know Pauliina since 2012 when I did stage management for FELT-IF, the Festival for English Language Theatre In Finland, where she presented "Bear with me", an amazing play that she wrote and direct. We have never worked together before, but we've seen each other act and direct on several occasions.
So what could make me a good match for this project, "The Baltimore Waltz"? I started reading the script and I started to understand. She thought of me for character named "The Third Man/Doctor". Basically, all characters interacting with Anna and Carl as they travel by imagination to and through Europe are played by the same actor. And because they travel to Europe, that involves languages and accents. The play uses French, German, and Dutch. Luckily I am a French native speaker and I studied in Zurich, where I improved my German significantly. Only Dutch I do not speak at all, but fortunately, the play contains only short sentences and few words in Dutch.
Learning lines is an interesting process when you mix languages. A lot of sentences would mix a foreign word in an English sentence. Some lines mix two languages. Sometimes I would know what I am supposed to say, but I would say it in the wrong language. I found it interesting how the (my?) brain works.
Of course acting consist of embodying a character, but ultimately the main challenge for me is to change character more than ten times during roughly one hour and a half. This includes changing costume, posture, voice pitch, way of speaking, and accent. And some of the changes have to happen fast! How often do actors need to do this? Of course the play is divided in scenes and working on scenes individually helped to shape the characters and luckily the play is comedic and the characters are very different from each other, which helps not to make them distinct. As we are approaching to the shows and putting the pieces together, I focus now on putting myself in the next character as fast as possible, as the same time as I change costume backstage as quickly as possible.
My biggest fear: mixing up my characters and entering the stage with the wrong costume!
-Arnaud
So what could make me a good match for this project, "The Baltimore Waltz"? I started reading the script and I started to understand. She thought of me for character named "The Third Man/Doctor". Basically, all characters interacting with Anna and Carl as they travel by imagination to and through Europe are played by the same actor. And because they travel to Europe, that involves languages and accents. The play uses French, German, and Dutch. Luckily I am a French native speaker and I studied in Zurich, where I improved my German significantly. Only Dutch I do not speak at all, but fortunately, the play contains only short sentences and few words in Dutch.
Learning lines is an interesting process when you mix languages. A lot of sentences would mix a foreign word in an English sentence. Some lines mix two languages. Sometimes I would know what I am supposed to say, but I would say it in the wrong language. I found it interesting how the (my?) brain works.
Of course acting consist of embodying a character, but ultimately the main challenge for me is to change character more than ten times during roughly one hour and a half. This includes changing costume, posture, voice pitch, way of speaking, and accent. And some of the changes have to happen fast! How often do actors need to do this? Of course the play is divided in scenes and working on scenes individually helped to shape the characters and luckily the play is comedic and the characters are very different from each other, which helps not to make them distinct. As we are approaching to the shows and putting the pieces together, I focus now on putting myself in the next character as fast as possible, as the same time as I change costume backstage as quickly as possible.
My biggest fear: mixing up my characters and entering the stage with the wrong costume!
-Arnaud