Actors have to have good diction.  I don’t care what sort of character you are playing or what their accent is.  Diction is essential to comprehension.  Remember, the audience has never heard these words before, or at least, you should assume they haven’t.  (Even if you’re doing Shakespeare, operate on the assumption that at least some of the audience has never heard or read Hamlet before.)

Diction relies upon consonants being fully pronounced.  American English is much more focused on vowel sounds than consonants.  British English is the reverse.  The British use their lips much more than Americans do (if you’re doing a British accent in a play, and doing it well, you’ll find that your lips will get fatigued in your first week or two!), and this contributes to the fact that their diction is so much more precise than ours.

I’m not suggesting that you use a British accent, but you should be sensitive to the fact that we Americans sometimes get very lazy in our speech and so glide through the harder consonants that help to define the perimeters of words.  In real life, I can ask you to repeat something if you’ve slurred a word.  The audience can’t do that.  So you need to be sure that you are more careful in your speech when you are onstage than you are in everyday life.

If you are working in a college or professional theater, there may be staff in charge of caring for your costumes.  If so, it is your responsibility to treat your costume with care:  pull up your trousers when you sit so you don’t stress the crotch seam; don’t let your dress’ train sweep the dirt off the floor; don’t eat in costume unless you have a robe or towel covering your front and your lap.

Your other responsibility in this situation is to alert the staff in a timely fashion to any problems with your costumes:  tears in the fabric, buttons that are coming lose, seams that are straining.  The sooner they know about it, the sooner they can be fixed.

If, however, you are doing a show where there is no one assigned to take care of costumes, then guess what?  Anything to do with your costumes, including the above, is also your job.

Maybe not the repair work.  Maybe.  But the daily cleaning and caring for your costume is.

What should you be doing?

When the make-up stains on your shirt collar start to become evident to those in the first row, you need to wash it.  When your costume starts to stink, either wash it or spray it with vodka (the cheapest and best way to freshen costumes, believe it or not.  Just don’t use Absolut.)

And please – iron it.  In between shows.  If you’re doing three or four performances a week, by the time you get to the last one, your pants look like you’ve spent all day in the car.  If your character is arriving at the girl’s house for a first date, rumpled is usually not the look you’re going for.

If your costume is a slip or a satin dress that’s been stored in a box in the theater, please iron it before the first show!  I did a show once with a young woman who had a simple satin wedding dress as one of her costumes.  It was her first show at this theater, so I assumed that she thought someone would be ironing it for her, and didn’t have time to do it herself on opening night after she got to the theater.  I expected, however, that she’d either ask about who was taking care of the costumes or iron it herself before the next performance.

Wrong assumption.  After a few nights, I took to ironing it myself before she got to the theater.  (I couldn’t figure out how to gently suggest that she do it, and so left it to the director to mention, which he didn’t.  But I found the wrinkly dress a bit embarrassing on stage and so did it myself.)

And while we’re on the subject – if you use anything (costume or props) that has been collecting dust for years on some back shelf – please clean it.  The dust on a patent leather purse, the dirt on the flowers on your hat, and the dull scuffs on your shoes can all be seen from the audience.  Leave them in that condition ONLY if it is appropriate to your character, please!

This is a matter of courtesy to your audience, not your co-workers.

The audience would like to hear what you are saying.  A good script has had all extraneous words excised from it.  The audience needs to hear every one that remains.

Think of a stage as a room.  Whatever voice is adequate to fill that room, whether it’s the size of a standard classroom, or your living room, or a spacious great room, there is a voice that will fill it appropriately.  We don’t shout in kitchens unless something is burning or you’re about to pour vinegar into the pot, thinking it is wine.  Most kitchens aren’t that big that we need to raise our voices above normal speaking tones.

Remember that “normal” is dependent on the size of the room you’re in.  The larger the room, the louder your voice needs to be in order to be heard by anyone in that room.

Many new actors use a volume level that is appropriate to the size of the stage, but NOT to the stage plus auditorium.  The room you are occupying and have to fill is the entire space used by both actors and audience.  It doesn’t matter that the person you are speaking to is a character standing four feet away.  Your Four Foot Voice isn’t going to make it to the tenth row.

Some people have naturally loud voices, and some people have very small, quiet voices.  I’ve had students doing a scene six feet away from me, and I can barely hear them, their voices are so small and shy.  It’s fine to use that voice off stage, but on stage, your voice has to be big enough to be heard, as the saying goes, by the Little Old Deaf Lady in the Back Row.

In other words, the person sitting furthest away from you needs to be able to hear what you say as clearly as they could if you were sitting next to them.

Don’t worry about the fact that you’re speaking louder than the person in the front row needs in order to be able to hear you.  Your responsibility isn’t to him.  Your responsibility is to Grandma, who can’t walk well and so parked herself in the first empty seat she found when she walked into the theater.

Sometimes when I stand in the back of the theater and ask someone to shout, I still can’t hear them.  They are sure they are roaring, but I have to strain to understand them.  So have someone give you feedback on how audible you are from the back row.  Once you get a thumbs-up from them, you know what is required and that you can actually produce that volume, even if you aren’t accustomed to speaking at that level.  (If you can’t produce that volume or sustain it over multiple performances, that’s when you need to seek the help of a vocal coach, who can teach you how to use your vocal instrument.)

Remember that the quieter moments in a play nevertheless have to be heard by those in the last row.  Stage whispers aren’t like ordinary whispers.  Check with your director on your levels, and take his admonitions seriously.

If you are challenged in this area, then it’s going to be even harder for you to learn to shout when you need to in the context of a play (because you’re angry, for instance).  Best to overcome the challenge now, before you’re faced with that kind of scene in rehearsals!

One last thing:  Remember that people absorb sound in the same way that the soft materials used in soundproofing equipment do.  In other words, the larger the audience, the louder you have to be to be heard.

When you’re not on stage, either in rehearsals or performance, be quiet.  The sound of your voice is distracting to those who are on stage, even if the audience can’t hear you.  The green room typically isn’t a place you can speak in normal tones.  I recently did a show where the action on stage was very quiet but the green room was very noisy, and not only did it throw me off, it was so audible to me that I can’t believe the front rows of the audience couldn’t hear it, too.

I’ve also heard people standing in the wings talk in a normal voice rather than a whisper.  It’s just disrespectful to those who are on stage.  If you have to do more than whisper, go far enough away from the stage that you are certain that no one can hear you.  Depending on the design of the theater, even the dressing room may not be far enough away.  Just think about where you are before you start speaking.

I understand that performances can be tedious if you have a small role, and staying silent for two hours isn’t the most fun in the world.  When the offstage sounds start to resemble a party, however, that’s too much.  There’s something in between.  Find it.