An actor has two expressive tools: the voice and body. This year I am experimenting with to teaching and decided to focus on each tool separately and then combine the two. For the past two weeks, I’ve been focusing on the actor’s voice.
To start the unit, I used the beginning assignments from Kristin Linklater’s “Freeing the Natural Voice.” Students visualized their voice by drawing a picture entitled, “My Voice As It Is Now,” and a second picture entitled, “My Voice As I Would Like It To Be.” In doing this exercise, I found that it was helpful to explain that this does not have to be a literal or realistic drawing, but could be abstract, symbolic, or impressionistic. Then on another piece of paper, we drew the outline of a doughboy or gingerbread man. Students were instructed to color, impressionistically or figuratively, whatever they see as the problems that prevent their voice from being the voice they would like it to be.
Finally, we looked at each picture and made lists of words that are suggested by each picture. The words that occur may come from the language of form and shape, or color, or texture, or emotions, or psychology. From these words quickly write, without much thought, a poem entitled “A Poem To My Voice.” It was helpful to give this as a timed assignment. Timing it forced them to write something without over editing themselves.
I'll admit that some students initially struggled with picturing their voice, but starting this way was successful because the students were able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their own voice and create a goal for their voice knowing what obstacles they have to overcome. I was then able to layer on the 3 goals of an actor's voice:
1. To Be Heard Throughout the Auditorium
2. To Be Understood Throughout the Auditorium
3. To Meet Any Demand In A Healthy Manner
I love the imagery in what Grotowski says about voice: "The spectator not only hears the voice of the actor but is also penetrated by it as if it were stereophonic. The spectator must be surrounded by the actor's voice as it were coming from every direction and not just the spot where the actor is standing. The very walls must speak with the voice of the actor."
We then looked at how the voice works scientifically. is the process of emitting sound by forcing air through the vocal folds that are then altered and amplified by the resonators. I use an acronym called R.A.V.E. to explain this. Next to an outline of a body, write R.A.V.E vertically, which R at the head and E at the diaphragm.
E= Exhale from the diaphragm, which pushes the air from your lungs through your vocal cords. We talked about our diaphragm a lot in our relaxation/breathing unit just before this, so didn’t elaborate here.
V=Vocalize, which happens when air passes through your vocal folds causing them to vibrate. To see the vocal folds in action, I showed this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XGds2GAvGQ
A=Articulate, which happens in the dental and oral cavities.
R= Resonate, which happens in the sinus, thoracic, and oral cavities. Students can pinch their nose to hear sinus resonance, and do vocal sirens to explore how the resonation travels in their bodies.
As a fun assessment, we made play doh models on the vocalization process and students presented their models to the class in-role as scientists at a research conference.
After looking at the scientific how of vocalization, we moved specifically into articulation. I used Robert Benedetti’s “The Actor at Work” for great information on the different articulators. If you don’t want to look so in depth, just knowing the lips, the teeth, and the tongue is helpful. We looked at tongue twisters, and finally, I played “Modern Major-General” from “The Pirates of Penzance.”
We compared and contrasted these three
Movie Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X--ngR15_JM
A Canadian Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlTisI_HSgw
An English Version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs3dPaz9nAo
My students almost all unanimously loved the Canadian version the best. Their first major assessment for this unit is to perform the opening verse of “Modern Major General.” We practiced singing along using the captioned versions of the movie and English version on YouTube. The first few times we were singing along were terrible and ended up with students almost shouting because they were trying so hard to get the words out. A fellow teacher walked by our classroom and I can only imagine what it looked like from the outside! This assignment has excited the students more than I thought, and I even have one who memorized the entire song just because!
The students perform their verse next class, and I can’t wait. What projects or activities do you use to teach voice? Comment below!
#Acting #Curriculum