Story: Stage Acting vs Voice Acting
Story: Stage Acting vs Voice Acting
JMM had the pleasure of hosting high school student Mark Marcelle for a brief Internship Program. While working from the New York office, Marcelle got to learn about the differences between one of his passions: stage acting and voice acting. Marcelle wrote about his findings (and created this graphic) in a culmination of his time here at JMM.
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“All the world’s a stage,” but not all acting is the same. You may hear “actors” and first think of stages and lights and movies. However, voice acting isn’t always what comes up to mind.
Voice acting is a form of acting that requires you to do so much with so little. You need to express emotion, beauty, clarity—you need to have all the qualities of a stage actor—but only with your voice. Some may argue that stage acting is harder, but voice acting seems to be the more difficult kind. With voice acting, your voice is your instrument. Some people think this makes it easier since you don’t need to use your whole body. However, it’s your only instrument, so you need it to be perfect. You need to sell a whole character with only your voice. You can’t mess up.
In voice acting, you don’t always get as much preparation as other performers. In stage or film acting, you get your script way before showtime. However, in voice acting you may not get it until just a few minutes before. Although you’re most likely going to be reading off the paper, your time for preparation and rehearsal may not be the same, ultimately making it more challenging for the actor. In stage acting, some believe that the script is just an outline for the actor, but I’ve personally learned that in voice acting, there are many people who go through the voice script to make sure you said every single word correctly. It has to be precise and if you change anything, it’ll be noticed, which can also be difficult if you’re tired. There could also be times where there’s more film time that a voice actor needs to do than a stage actor: Sometimes when voice acting or speaking audio books, I’ve learned that you can spend up to twenty hours doing so.
Within stage acting, you don’t commonly need to develop your voice as intensely. Obviously you need your voice for saying your lines and projecting. But in voice acting, your voice needs to be able to change—it needs to be able to create different tones, different pitches, etc., especially for animated cartoon voice acting. There are a lot of times where the character has to sound goofy, kid friendly, and more, and you aren’t directed all the time like in live acting. In voice acting, especially now during COVID, a lot of voice actors have to self-direct, and that makes the process harder. Therefore, your voice needs to have a range of talent and ability that a stage actor may not need to have.
Overall, voice acting and stage acting both have their challenges. In stage acting, since you don’t always have something you’re reading off of, you’re more likely to need to spend more time memorizing. If you’re doing live acting, you need to make sure you aren’t messing up at all, basically being perfect. In my opinion, although I do prefer screen and stage acting, voice acting seems to be more challenging. As someone who likes stage acting, I am used to depending on things other than just my voice, like my body movements, body emotions, and facial expressions—all those things can save me in the moment of acting on stage or screen. However, as I stated before, voice actors only have their voice. Their voice is their core instrument and all they have to depend on. Therefore, they need to spend way more time training it than another actor working on a different platform would have to. They need to spend more time practicing and preparing their voice and making sure it sounds the best it can