Polònia’s actors and actresses aim to experience the whole voice of a politician and not just the words of their utterances. This assertion coincides with data presented in the previous chapter when it was said that participants rely on the sensations experienced in their own bodies to craft their characters. In this case, they try to make their own voices be possessed by the real politician’s voice. Crafting an imitation of the voice does not mean obtaining a ‘carbon copy’ of the original politician’s voice. Actors try to catch as many voice elements as possible in order to identify the most characteristic ones. They take into account regional accents, languages, pronunciations, pitch and prosody, among others. Once the most characteristic elements are identified, actors place emphasis on them in order to create a caricature of a politician’s voice. They recognise, however, certain limitations in imitating a voice, so the character voice ends up being the result of the original one combined with the actor’s own limitations.
“Voice in itself has personality”, said Judit Martín, actress on Polònia since 2016 and with previous experience of political impersonation for radio shows, “in radio, voice is everything, so if you make a good impersonation, you can express a certain way of being of the politician just with the voice. It is all about that”. She continued:
I mean, there are so many things in there, I don’t know, rhythm, melody, bass, middle, treble voice. Or if she speaks Castilian or Catalan, and if she is from Catalonia, you can tell what region she is from. And, this is very interesting, when you can feel certain aftertaste of a regional accent but very weak, you can tell something about his life path as well.
Francesc Casanovas also sees voice characterisation as a very important part of crafting a character:
However, rather than aiming for an exact carbon copy of the original voice, it’s the curvature that helps you better portrait the politician. In my experience, accent and pronunciation, you have to go for them, absolutely. Accent and pronunciation are like his face, like a characteristic gesture.
Francesc has worked on the show since 2006, impersonating about 20 politicians. In December 2016, when this interview was conducted, he was working on Gerardo Pisarello, first secretary of Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona:
When I do him, I do an Argentinian accent, although he is perfectly fluent in Catalan. In this case I grasp that feature because it is his picture, he can be perfectly pictured in how he mixes up Catalan and Argentinian accent.
David Olivares, however, thinks differently about voice:
If I find myself talking about a character’s way of talking means that I have nothing to say about him. I do it because it is my job and that is it. I want my characters to have soul, my own point of view. Makeup helps, costume as well, but what really matters, for me, is a point of view, something to play with. Voice?… Let’s wait and see.
Actor David Marcé also considers the practicalities of his job and the use of voice as a shortcut to craft a character:
On Polònia, we usually have to craft characters overnight. When you are told so, all you wish is for the politician to have a phonetic defect, a wrong pronunciation or bad articulation, I don’t know. Something to start working with; a certain prosody; Something! Anything! Some politicians are harder than others to get them done. When you find something in the voice you are half done. If not, ufff!
Antoni Albá observed that:
Of course you can use the voice to quickly craft your impersonation. Some of my colleagues on Polònia can make some amazing voices quickly, I can’t do that. I am
not good at this but because it takes time. So, I try to go for other things. What I try to hear is the background bagpipe, everyone has a bagpipe in his voice, even if I don’t speak this is what you can hear from the character. Once I got the background bagpipe, then I try to say a text with a good modulation. Often you end up exaggerating the bagpipe. The bagpipe is what helps you identify the character.
When crafting the imitation of physicality, actors and actresses explained that the resultant character emerges from a dialectic between the real-life politician and the artist’s own experience. When it comes to voice, the same can be said, although in this case physical limitations have a role to play. “After so many years in this business I have concluded that as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, sounds are in the ears of the listeners” said David Olivares, also observing that:
This is so dependent on your own perceptions that you can end up engaging in discussions with you colleagues about how someone speaks. ‘This guy has a more bass voice’ and you say ‘no, no he has a treble voice. Really? I hear otherwise’.
Francesc Casanovas agrees with David Olivares and gives the example of his character of José Bono (minister of Defence 2008-2011):
When I was told to do that character everyone told me ‘this is a godsend to you’. Everyone said Bono was such an obvious character, very easy and all of them seemed to see clearly his way of talking. For me, on the contrary, it was a difficult process of listening, discarding, visualising, listening, discarding, and so on. At the beginning he sounded like a drunk man, then I started to catch him. For the rest it seemed so easy, for me it was a whole internal process.
Francesc has done several female characters, such as Rita Baberá (mayor of Valencia 1991-2015): Sometimes I have lost my voice doing Rita, because she had that broken voice, a
‘carajillo’ thing14 with some masculine posture15. Another case is Pilar Rahola. She
is such a clever journalist, very cultured, but when she gets angry in a debate she gets mad and shouts with a treble voice which, I am sure, any of my female colleagues could do better. I try to do my best, but I crash into my male limitations and it is difficult to incorporate more elements to the character.
14 Carajillo is a popular drink in Madrid made of spirit, rum or brandy, poured into hot black coffee. 15 Watch the original online: https://youtu.be/zVAZaFf9wGA
Actress Agnès Busquets also copes with her own physical limitations when crafting a voice imitation:
Because I have the instrument [voice] that I have. Soraya has a very special voice marked by a constantly blocked nose. Over time she as re-educated his voice but she still has that congestion and of course I bring this to an exaggeration. I am aware that my voice is not the exact copy of Soraya’s one because she makes some inflexions and voice breaks, you know, like a rooster. I can’t do that. I rather go to what I can do and that is the nasal congestion.
Actors also mentioned their own personal experience as a resource to craft a character voice: I was raised in Catalan, this is my mother tongue although I am fluent in Castilian as well. So, for me it is easier to see vocal characteristics in a Catalan speaker than in a Castilian speaker. Because in my language I can tell if someone is from Lleida, Girona or Barcelona, but in Castilian, it does not come that easy because it is difficult for me to tell if he makes mistakes or if his melody is his own personal melody or is the same regional accent. I am going to exaggerate my argument to make it clear. I don’t know, with Frenches I would never know where they are from (David Marcé).
Judit Martin also uses her personal life experiences:
I don’t know, if you have to do an Argentinian and you had lived for long with Argentinians it is easier, or if you know that accent because you have family in the south, so to speak; or because you have been raised in a very deprived area so that you can make a very good working-class way of speaking. If this is the case, you don’t strive for that, it just comes to you.
For example, she mentions Esperanza Aguirre (former president of Madrid Autonomic Community 2002-2013):
She very much reminds me of my dad’s aunt that we used to visit and, this is important, we used to laugh at her, my sister and I, so she was very present in our life. That personal experience plus voice tone plus accent and you are done.
This section described the main elements of crafting characters’ voices in the words of actors. It can be argued that the process of crafting a voice is rather similar to that described in Chapter 4 relating to politicians’ physicality. Here, Polònia’s staff also aim to experience in their own bodies the stimuli given by the politicians. This is made evident when actors mention their own limitation in putting one another’s voice in one’s own throat and mouth. So far, words have
nothing to do in the process, because the focus is on the expressive means. However, participants’ accounts reveal that relevant information to picture a politician can be found in the pragmatic elements, as the literature on sociolinguistics suggests (Addington, 1968; 1971; Moe, 1972; Willemyns et al., 1997), especially when it comes to regional accents and pronunciations (Docherty and Foulkes, 1999; Mathisen, 1999; Mees and Collins, 1999; Stuart‐Smith et al., 2007). Pragmatics elements are critical on stage and, together with script lines, help to impersonate a politician’s intentions.