Last week, we unfortunately had someone drop out of the podcast I’ve been co-writing at work. That meant we had to shuffle the cast a bit, which resulted in me being bumped from one of the side characters (Charlotte) to one of the main characters (Kaitlyn). And we’re recording some of the Kaitlyn scenes Monday (ie yesterday)!
Cue me freaking out a bit. I’ve been ready to play Charlotte for months now. While writing the script, I could picture her voice in my head. I knew her. I could nail her dialogue. But Kaitlyn was written for someone else. While writing I was picturing her as the other actress, trying to tailor the words to her. And suddenly Kaitlyn is me! What do I do??? I’m not Kaitlyn!!! 😨
Well, one of the best things I did in the middle of freaking out a bit was message an actor friend of mine for some advice. What do you do if you’ve been preparing for one role and suddenly given another one. He sent me the most wonderful reply (thank you again, Kevin!!!) telling me to find the commonality between me and the character, and make sure I bring myself to the character. So with that in mind, I spent a few days trying to figure out who Kaitlyn is as a character and how exactly we can connect. And then I started playing with the dialogue a bit (that was an idea I had based off talking to my friend Scott about how Anthony Hopkins prepared for Two Popes), trying to deliver the lines in a way that is still me (I’m not going to lie, I also tinkered with the dialogue here and there if I had trouble saying something as it was written, too). Between all of this, by Saturday night, I felt like I had a feel for Kaitlyn’s voice.
Kaitlyn’s character has changed a little bit in the process. We originally wrote her to be more monotone and sarcastic, particularly with her humour. But now that I’m the one delivering the lines, especially opposite the other main character, Darryl (who is absolutely ridiculous; he’s voiced by my co-writer, Derek), the monotone sarcasm felt hollow. I found myself delivering a lot of the lines with a hint of laughter and light teasing instead of sarcasm as I was practicing over the weekend. So the podcast is going to have a different Kaitlyn than originally envisioned, which will hopefully be ok!
Thankfully recording yesterday went really well. Lisa, (another co-worker who was doing the recording), said Derek and I sounded really natural – the dialogue flowed well and sounded like a conversation (bonus points for our writing! 😉 ) We actually recorded more than we thought we would yesterday, which was another bonus – I can’t wait to hear the finished product! 🙂
It’s going to be a bit though before it’s available; while the scenes that just feature Derek and me are done, we’ve got a few more recording sessions scheduled. There will be one for my character’s monologues, a few for a few other character monologues, plus a few involving almost the entire cast!
I’ll post more updates on this project as I have them. 🙂
An Acquaintance with Letters 