Rand Unwrapped (10 page)

When I am presented with a new animated character that has already been created and is up on the screen, it is as much about how they move within the universe that is created for them than the lines they speak. When I research a new character that has already been drawn I want to see how they move within the space. Do they move slowly, do they swagger or do they stay confined within their own personal space? Think about people you may know in life. Do they often take up more space than they really should by spreading themselves out be extending outward in every thing they do. They talk loud, place their belongings all over the place and often literally spread themselves outward by literally opening their legs or arms. Then, you may know another person in life who barely makes a dent in their space. Their arms are folded inward so that they can take up as little space as possible when they enter a room. Think about this the next time you're on an elevator. How do the people around you take that space? The normal physical
reaction in an elevator is to close inward as the space diminishes. The more crowded the elevator becomes the more you pull inward. As the personal space around us gets smaller we pull inward and compensate. With that said, have you ever had someone violate your personal space without warrant? I was on line at a Thrifty one time and the person at the cash register was extremely slow. There was nothing that could be done about it. However, there was this guy behind me, who kept getting more frustrated as each minute went by. As his frustration increased, he kept moving closer and closer to me until finally his body started brushing up against my butt and breathing down my neck. It was a clear-cut brush of the butt. I guess the thinking behind it was a gentle nudge against my butt was going to make the line move more quickly. He pushed up against my butt, once, then twice and on number three I turned to him told him to back off and that brushing up against my butt wouldn't make the line move any faster. I might have said something a little more explicative but you get the point. Characters like people have a specific relationship to the space they move in. In my case, Rand took a lot of space and wasn't afraid to get into with it with any Invid that stepped into it.

This may seem a bit too complicated to create an animated character. However in a series such as
Robotech
we were playing real people not cartoony voiced grasshoppers and ants. It was important to me to capture how the character filled the space that was created. Also, how the other characters responded to my character. I remember voicing the first episode of
The New Generation
when Rand meets Scott Bernard. There was a competitive spirit set up in those first few scenes on the mecha. When they drive, their mecha are close to one another competing for the same space and who will take the lead. That's how it was in the beginning but then the relationship between Rand and Scott Bernard would evolve into something much more complicated. Scott Bernard would go on to teach Rand to be a true
Robotech
warrior but at the first moment they see each other, their relationship starts off as competitive. While their relationship evolved, that competitive spirit was still evident throughout the rest of
The New Generation
. That evolutionary change in the relationship of these two characters and every character in the series had to be reflected in the voice characterization. Now I will confess that when you're in the studio you don't have any time to contemplate these character choices. You have only to rely on your individual talent and the choices that come from your true intuition. If you have lines to respond to in your head set then you have that hook to work with. If you don't, you have got to make the choice based upon your observation of what's up on the screen and what if anything the director in the room can tell you. This is how I approached creating Rand. But there is more to it than that.

The creation of just the right voice for an already drawn character is a best like a sonar reading on a submarine. You never get the whole picture. You have the visual animation and if you're lucky a voice to respond to in your head set and hopefully a good director. But then you have to connect those character choices to something inside of you. This is not to say that every experience Rand had I had myself. But it was important for me to connect the core of who Rand was and what he did to something that I could understand and relate to creatively. While I've never had to take out an Invid, I have socked a nun. If needed, I could have used this frightening experience to help me to connect emotionally, intellectually and physically to the Rand character. In many ways to “act” a particular character you must connect to your self. You may be thinking, am I a method actor? The answer is no.

Method acting attempts to create character choices by connection to the actor's own emotional history and experience. While I have done this and it is an effective way to find the core of a character in a film or play, it doesn't fully address the challenges of creating a voice for an animated character. While I value the method acting technique and the work of Stanislavski, much of my training as an actor was in Asian Theatre. Specifically the performance of Peking Opera and Japanese Kabuki. The character approach in these forms of theatre is primarily external in that the actor absorbs the external qualities of the character. The technique is more about the appearance of the character quality than the actor actually making an internal connection. For example, if the character feels grief, the actor does not necessarily have to feel grief. The importance is to create the physical qualities to create the illusion of grief within the reality of the character and have the audience believe it. I'm sure there are many volumes written on Chinese and Japanese theatre but my relationship to these art forms was not academic. It was primarily first hand experience.

I had the opportunity of working off Broadway in two Peking Opera styled productions
Shang Hai Lil
and another called
Double Five Flower Grotto
both directed by the experimental artist Ching Yeh.
Double Five Flower Grotto
was performed in Chinese Mandarin language, which was a real challenge for me to learn. A dialogue coach worked with me for weeks to learn the appropriate physicality and dialect for each character. In addition, I spent hours with head set glued to my ears listening and trying to repeat the Chinese dialogue with just the right inflection. I never really got it and I think the person who was my dialogue coach hated me. I played a clown character called a
Chou,
which was physically demanding role because it required comic acting, acrobatics and a strong voice. I had to spend the entire play in a crouched position. I had to crouch even when I moved around the stage. Not much fun then and probably not physically possible for me to do now without a cracking sound coming out of my knees. In the Peking Opera form, the approach to the role is almost entirely based upon technique and physicality so it didn't matter if I knew exactly what I was speaking as long as I moved just the right way. I'm sure Ching Yeh and the dialogue coach did not share this belief but that was my hook. The moving around part, believe it or not was much easier for me to remember, so I was able to get away with it. Besides, when we performed in New York City, there weren't very many, if any, members of the audience who spoke fluent Chinese. So, I was okay. When I got a full scholarship to attend graduate school at The University of Hawaii, I grabbed it. It gave me the opportunity to learn more about Peking Opera, Japanese Kabuki and Noh Drama.

When I finally got to Hawaii, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was and how lucky I was to be there. My first experience there was studying Japanese Noh drama. I quickly came to the conclusion that Noh drama bored the hell out me. While it was intriguing to watch, it didn't have the physical connection that I found in Kabuki. However, the approach to a role for a Kabuki actor was very interesting to me because although it too was an external approach, it managed to achieve a highly emotional audience response in performance. I hope my drama teachers in University of Hawaii never read this book, because I will attempt here to feebly to describe the creation of a character in the Kabuki style.

Kabuki costumes and make up are extremely elaborate and can take a considerable amount of time to assemble and put on before a show. However, once the costume was completed, there was a total transformation from actor to character. The actor was totally
transformed into the character. This can really be illustrated by looking at the
onnagata
character. The
onnagata
is a female character type in the Kabuki played solely by male actors. These male actors study for a lifetime to create the illusion that they are women down to the most intricate detail. In order for this illusion to be accomplished, there must be a total transformation physically, emotionally and intellectually. Once this occurs, the audience accepts this reality and can then get into the plot and characters of the play. One thing that has stuck in my memory was a Kabuki character's initial entrance onto the stage in a play.

The traditional Kabuki staging is set in the proscenium format, like the conventional type of seating you would experience in a western playhouse or movie theatre. However, there is one additional piece of staging called a
hanamichi
which is a runway that passes from the rear of the theatre to stage right at the level of the spectators' heads. The hanamichi was used mostly for spectacular entrances, exits, processions, and battles. Just before one of these spectacular entrances, the Kabuki actors still backstage in full costume and makeup would look at themselves in a full-length mirror and absorb their character visually before their entrance. A moment later, the sound of a loud bamboo curtain opening signaled their entrance to the audience. The character would then proceed down the
hanamichi
ramp, which ran through the audience area and eventually step onto the stage. These characters were created totally through tradition, an intense understanding of their physicality and technique. The creation of a vocal characterization for an already drawn animated character uses many of the same principals.

Robotech
was not a Peking Opera or Kabuki performance but it required an internal as well as an external physical approach to the character. To create the character of Rand, I also had to incorporate an internal technique and rely on experiences from my past. I needed both an external and internal approach to make specific choices to create the right voice. In these next chapters, I will try to detail that exploration and reveal the connections from my past that I used in the creation of the character of Rand in
The New Generation.

“When I was a kid, I saw a movie that was just like this. The good guys and the bad guys each waiting for each other to make the first move.

- Lonely Soldier Boy - Episode 13

Many actors often rely on specific memories or images from their past when trying to connect with and portray a character in a play or film. The connections could be to specific events, experiences or just general characteristics of a given person, place or thing. Within the study of method acting, these memories are referred to as
affective memory
or
emotional memory
.
Actors rely on personal memories of situations similar to those of the character they are trying to portray. They connect these memories to the situation that their characters face within a given script. In addition,
sense memory
is also used to recall physical sensations surrounding emotional events rather than the emotions themselves. There are many schools of thought as to whether there is any value in approaching a character role in this manner. It works for some actors and characters more than others. The type and style of the piece they are working on also comes into play. If the presentation framed in a highly stylized setting, much of the internal work gets lost in the design of the production. If the work being presented requires a strong emotional base framed within a realistic setting, such internal work can be very valuable in creating a character. So, the answer is that both internal and external methods can be very helpful in creating a specific character. In my case, along with the physical approach that I acquired from Peking Opera and Kabuki, I wanted to create a more in depth portrayal to Rand by connecting what he was going through to my own experiences. While I was not Rand and he was not me, there were areas of our collective experience that could be tapped into We were both guided by role models that showed us the right path. These were individuals who were not afraid to stand up and fight for what they believed in. For Rand, the role model was clearly Scott Bernard. Scott Bernard taught Rand how to be a soldier and fight for a cause that was larger than himself. In Rand's eyes, Scott Bernard was more than just his role model. He was his hero. To find my heroes, I took another path.

When I was small New York Italian child between the ages of four and seven, I would spend part of my week at my aunt Virginia and uncle Marty's house. My uncle Marty was my mom's oldest brother. My parents owned a produce business that required them to work long hours on the weekends. They didn't have anyone to watch me. So, they shipped me off to aunt Virginia and uncle Marty's house in Queens, New York until my dad was able to pick me up on Sunday mornings and take me up on Sunday mornings and take me back home. My uncle's house was a huge two-story colonial located in a charming area of Queens called Cambria Heights. The house was an elegant older home probably built in the nineteen thirties and held it's own on the beautiful tree lined street where they lived. My aunt Virginia, a tall thin woman with curly hair spent a good deal of her time in the kitchen. She was a sweet soul who took great care of me. One thing I remember most about here is that she made the best vanilla malted milk shakes on
a huge blender in the kitchen. She taught me to be kind and giving. There were other people that lived there as well including my aunt Virginia's brother (Uncle Anthony), her father (Michael), her aunt (Aunt Lucy), my uncle Marty and my two cousins (Johnny and Juliana) along with a large Collie named Rinty (short for Rin Tin Tin). The household had lots of people energy like an Italian version of a Chekov play. It was a kind and loving place and I am glad that I was part of it. Aunt Lucy used to bake me coconut cakes and fresh apple pies. My cousin, Johnny (who was about seven years older than I was) introduced me to Doo Wop music and Elvis Presley on his 45 rpm Victrola. I still think of him today whenever I hear Elvis Presley sing “Love Me Tender.” My Aunt Virginia's brother, who I called Uncle Anthony, was a tall lanky sort of guy who always wore his paints up high on his waist, sported a white shirt and tie all the time. As I think of him now, he looked a lot like the actor Christopher Walken. Uncle Anthony was a devoted New York Yankees fan who watched baseball games on a small black and white television up in his bedroom on the second floor of the house. Sometimes, I'd sit with him there in front of the television and watch the games. As the game progressed, he would impart little bits of baseball philosophy to me. “
Ya got all of life down there on that field. The game teaches to be part of a team something bigger than you are. It teaches you to use your head in tight situations, how to be a winner and most important of all, how to lose with dignity.”
He tried to teach me all he could about baseball game and get me interested in actually playing the sport. But, although I liked baseball it never really stuck to me. I was really never one of those sports type kids. I guess I was destined to be a theatre major although I didn't know it when I was five. But Uncle Anthony's baseball analogies taught me that it was important to be part of a team. That
“no man is an island”
(I actually think John Donne said that) but that value that Uncle Anthony imparted stuck with me the rest of my life.