Reading the Lines Naturally The best criterion for the amateur actor's line reading may be summed up in a single sentence: Did the readings seem natural? Long hours of study and rehearsal, and the best of good intentions, will bring only limited success if a reading seems stilted and unconvincing.
Good reading of dialogue has the quality and the effect of real conversation.
It is lively and expressive, varied and interesting.
A conversationally spoken line has a certain ring of the genuine and the normal which an obviously recited speech always lacks; it is without the exaggerated artificiality and the unreal monotony of mechanical declamation.
A good actor gives the impression that he is thinking and uttering ideas for the first time, not merely repeating memorized words.
Such naturalness in the reading of lines is not so difficult to achieve as it may at first appear.
Conversing in real life and reading lines in a play differ in degree rather than in kind; the mental action involved is much the same in both.
In everyday conversation, the actor utters his ideas just as they are created in his mind.
He speaks as he thinks, and the words come out as he thinks - a phrase here, a hesitation there, a word, a spurt of words, and so on.
In delivering lines from a manuscript, on the other hand, the actor is repeating impressions that he has gleaned from a printed page.
The point at issue, therefore, is that as an actor you must do in reading lines what you do in real conversation: just as your mind creates the thoughts you speak while you are conversing, so your mind must recreate the thoughts you speak while you are reading lines.
If you are like most students, your reading can be genuine, convincing, conversational only if your mind is actively present at the moment of utterance.
It is in this sense, then, that you are advised to read naturally.
Nowhere has it been implied, of course, that you are just to "be yourself on the stage, regardless of dramatic effect.
If your day-by-day "natural" habits are to mumble your words or to mouth them over meticulously, such faults must obviously be corrected.
You can find here no blanket justification for habitually muffled or scratchy tones, or for a normally thin or breathy voice.
Your lines on the stage must usually be clearer and more interesting than in real life.
Hence, faults must be adjusted, meaningless or misleading details must be eliminated, and special points must be heightened for proper effect.
But at no time must your speech seem stilted, mechanical, or artificial.
Expressing the Meaning The first step in expressing the meaning of a character's lines is of course understanding them.
At the very least this requires that you know the common meaning of all the words used in those lines.
Use your dictionary as a guide, and be sure that you have mastered not only each literal and explicit meaning (that is, each "denotation") but each implication (or "connotation").
Don't take any chances; your grasp of detailed meanings must be complete, sure, unequivocal.
Note that some words whose superficial meaning may at first seem evident might have been used in a special sense and that if you are careless you may miss the point entirely.
Remember also that certain proper names, quotations, historical or literary allusions, and the like might have been given a specialized application.
But beyond such elementary problems of logical meaning lie other and no less important considerations.
The basic job in expressing the meaning of a line is proper grouping of the words that it contains.
That is to say, people normally do not speak in single words, but in groups of words.
Each of these groups, in turn, expresses an idea, or a relatively complete part of an idea.
To break up the idea by chopping its natural word group into separate words (or into unnecessarily small partial groups) makes for jerky reading that is both unnatural and difficult to follow.
The single idea of "Go" may be taken as a simple illustration.
In the author's manuscript, this idea may have been phrased, "Get out"; or, "Please leave the room"; or again, "Will you please leave this room at once.
" The number of words actually used here to express the idea varies from two to eight, although in each case the unit of thought is not the separate words, but the entire word group itself.
With a sentence like the one above, "Will you please leave this room at once," a speaker does not think first and separately of will, then of you, then of please, then of leave, and so on; he thinks of all the words, grouped as a single idea.
Similarly, in a longer sentence or group of sentences, one's thought does not move forward in a succession of single words, but progresses by word groups expressing single ideas.
From the standpoint of an actor preparing to read his lines, the number of words that are to be combined in a word group may vary considerably.
The actor's decision must be based on the thought to be expressed and the circumstances under which it is to be uttered.
If a character wishes to be impressive, or is speaking to someone who presumably has difficulty in understanding his ideas, he may use many and relatively short groups; under opposite conditions, few and relatively long ones.
A typical word group, however, usually contains from six or eight to a dozen or more words, smoothly tied together and expressing a single idea.
Each of these separate groups must be considered as a thought unit, regardless of its length, and each must be set off from its neighbors by a longer or shorter pause.
Failure to group properly in the reading of lines results in falsified meanings and in dulled or warped characterizations.