General Comments
Going from speaking and playing to singing and playing with many characters helps to find a different mindset in the poem and the song. Switching to recital mode worked better with some characters and their situation than with others. For example, the creative designer and the hippie were already standing and addressing a larger audience. So it was easy to go from the acting mode to the recital mode, while being the drunk in recital mode felt very uncomfortable.
Technically sometimes my voice didn’t work in harmony with the character I played and then I started pushing my sound. This is because playing a character is a physical thing that can give tensions around the larynx or abdominal system and therefore the sound get strained. To play so many different characters in one afternoon, was hard on my voice. If I had a performance of one song, I would have to practice more in the characters to make them sound natural with my voice. Another thing is that I still have to work more on how I can give really different voices and colours to songs sung performed in recital mode without losing the direction of the text and the focus of my eyes.
Acting out different characters, it was as though I was reciting a different poem every time. The words were the same, but the intention was different because the situation, conflict and status of each voice were different. It is very intense to zoom in on a poem so much, but to discover so many ways for interpreting really helps in communicating it in the three settings and still kept it fresh after a lot of time.
Laitman
The status of the voice in this song is high, someone dying to speak. This is the only song where the gender of the voice is more defined. The poem and the music were written by women, it is written for female voice and I am a woman, therefore it is logical to use a female character. I chose the old woman on the bus and the hippie girl for this experiment.
Old woman in bus
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An old woman, Trui, that lives on her own in Amsterdam, her husband died after being ill for a very long time. Now she is discovering more again about the world. She bought the regional bus card and she can even travel to Zaandam. Sometimes she passes the bus to the Zuidas, where all the office people go. She is nobody, she doesn’t even have a high-school diploma, but at least she is free to be who she wants. The one spoken to doesn’t want to play along with the game and instead of joining the old lady in her Nobodiness, he stays a Somebody, saying the same things all over with his friends. |
Comments:
This interpretation works very well for this song, because, in the end, she gives up trying to communicate with the person next to her and she can mumble to herself: “I’m Nobody…”, at least she can be herself.
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Hippie speech
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Ann was born in a rich, but strict family. But now she is an adult and free to do what she wants. She wants the world to be a better and peaceful place. With the poem, she is making a speech. She thinks the world is going down. Politicians just think about themselves and just preach for the same old people that do not care about the earth and their environment, about hunger an about war. She is the brave Nobody, her crowd are her fellow brave Nobodies. The politicians are the Somebodies, their followers the Bog |
Comments:
With the Hippie the repetition of ‘admiring’ followed by the beginning of the poem could be used as a doubt. A doubt that she is not different from the Somebodies by making this speech to her own Bog. To return to a secure statement: “I’m Nobody, don’t tell!” |
6. Outcomes: the video experiment
The final experiment of this research covers a lot of the characters described above. With every composition, the atmosphere of the music gave the incentive to choose two of the characters. In a video experiment, I first played the character out while singing the song, making a story around them, then went into recital mode, taking the character with me. Here are the outcomes per composition.
Bacon
The status of the character in this song seems low. The voice is someone that doesn’t like to be in the forefront by speaking up for him- or herself. The characters in the experiment are the mainstream man from the office and the drunk.
Going to the office
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Sales manager, Rob, has meetings every day. Al the time they are the same ones. He sees no way to escape this life and yet he feels different from the others, only he cannot show it, because maybe he will lose his credibility and people won’t give him recognition anymore. Getting up for another day of work, another repetitive day of work full of meetings in which colleagues will boast about what they did, Rob looks in the mirror and thinks: “Why didn’t I follow my dreams?”. The other Nobody is his mirror, the Somebodies are his colleagues. |
Comments: Playing this character on the song is not very convincing to me, because the song itself already is not so energetic, to have this completely bored character there, makes the song itself boring. |
The drunk
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Matthew drinks a lot every evening when he comes from work. He doesn’t want this, but he can’t stop himself. After drinking, he sits next to a woman that has her life completely in her own hands. He mockingly starts to speak to her in a philosophical way and asks if she is any different from him. But yes, deep down he is ashamed of himself and he wants to change into a better person. The other Nobody is the woman, who later turns into the Somebody because she doesn’t pay attention to him. |
Comments:
The drunk makes this introvert and serious song into something funny, but painful. The conflict of the guy wanting to be the same as others, but being rejected all the time comes out very well. |
Raspa
The status in this song is not as clear as in the other songs. In my experiment with the spoken sentences the sarcastic voices came out most natural and with the sometimes ominous character of the music, the voice also seems to give caution to others. For that reason, I chose the creative designer for this experiment. But, because I wanted the contrast and therefore I had the cleaner that’s absolutely bored with her job.
The Creative designer
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Mary is a self-assured creative designer with her own company who cannot understand how people can be so uncreative in their daily jobs. She has a very good career and a bold personality. She challenges people whose only business is to become somebody by desperately trying to please their superiors: her. She can make a speech in front of her office that she asks all the employees to stand out and be themselves and use that in their work to get more creative designs. ‘They’d advertise’, is sarcastically said, because that’s what it is all about: having the guts to create sensation. She mocks that they are Nobodies, like her. That being a Somebody will stop you from being creative. Her employees in reality now faking to be Somebody instead of putting the work before themselves. |
Comments:
The character went well together with the song. The angry boss that sometimes whispers very soft and almost sweet then uses the next moment to shout into an employee’s face. Another possibility is the office worker who wants to warn himself into not losing himself but knows that he has to fit in if he wants to keep his friends. |
The cleaner
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The cleaner, Sandra, that is bored with her job. She sees no way out of this life, because she doesn’t have a good education. The same day, same house, same vacuum cleaner, same chair. All the same. Vacuum cleaner against chair, bam, annoying. But the chair is not to blame. The chair is an ally, because the chair is also Nobody. She is a pair with the chair, so sits in it. How dreary it is anyway to be somebody. The people that she works for are all rich, they reached something in their lives, but can’t even clean their own houses. They have to talk all the time, and who is listening? A stupid bog of rich friends. She consoles with herself. |
Comments:
That the cleaner is a pair with the chair fits very well with the first part of the song. The second part it sometimes became artificial. |
