This week I worked on:
- Tension points
- Breath control
- Rubber Chicken
Posture:
This week I have changed my focus ever so slightly off of posture into more tension points in the posture. I had noticed that my posture was improving and I was running out of more things to work on with this, with relation to allowing it to improve my voice. So I lifted the focus more onto my tension points:
I hold most tension in my jaw, neck and shoulders.
I began with working on my jaw:
I notice that my jaw is beginning to click a lot which shows I hold an awful lot of tension here. It never aches or feels painful but recently it was pointed out to me that I have a tight jaw when performing and delivering lines; which holds me back on giving off a good vocal performance. The Complete Yoga Book: The Yoga Of Breathing, Meditation and Posture - James Hewitt, is a book I looked into when working on posture in the weeks before now, but for this week I looked into how to relax the muscles, starting off with the jaw. "To help relax the jaw, yawn slowly, resisting evenly all the way with the muscles of the jaw. Hold the contraction for six seconds; then let go, close the mouth and let the jaw sag." So I tried this little exercise out. The first time trying it felt a bit odd, it didn't really feel as though it was doing an awful lot. Then I figured out that it was asking me to keep my mouth open in the yawning position for six seconds, and then bringing up and closing the mouth but letting the jaw relax still but with the mouth closed instead of open. Doing this felt nice, it felt like I was stretching out the jaw as well as my face. When I brought my jaw up and closed my mouth, my jaw clicked once again but it felt nice to have my mouth closed but with my jaw still really relaxed.
I did this a few more times. I spent a lot of my time this week concentrating on how tense my jaw was. Every now and then I would notice it was unnecessarily tense. I tried to just relax the jaw where it was, without opening my mouth etc, and I could immediately feel the difference. The jaw area felt a lot lighter and obviously a lot less tense.
Another good jaw relaxer is just a simple rub down of the cheeks and jaw area.
1. Warm up the hands first
2. Open the mouth slightly, to a comfortable position
3. In a fist shape, use your hands to rub down along your jaw line
Take special attention to working on the top of your jaw (near your ears)
4. Rub all along where you can feel your jaw
This is just a simple exercise I find I can do anywhere at anytime. At the same time of doing this, I rotate my jaw a lot, i.e. open and close my mouth, as well as moving it in circular motions.
Doing all this really helped to relax my jaw, it felt a lot lighter after this week of regular warming up's and rotations etc.
I then moved onto working on my neck and shoulders. I combined the two because for me, I notice that if my shoulders ache so does my neck and vice versa. They are very closely linked in general but I notice they are very much in sync for me whenever I ache in those areas. I find the best method for me releasing tension in these areas; and its just simple rotations and stretches:
1. Rolling my shoulders back and forward. 10 times each way
2. Linking your hands behind your back, pulling your arms to a right angle from your back.
3. Stretching your upper back as well as seperating your shoulders
4. Rub all along where you can feel your jaw
1. Rolling my shoulders back and forward. 10 times each way
2. Linking your hands behind your back, pulling your arms to a right angle from your back.
Stretching your upper back as well as separating your shoulders
3. Hug yourself! Really tightly pulling your arms all around your body- which again separates your shoulder muscles and stretches them.
4. Neck. Look left, look right, up and then down. Each time holding the position and making sure to look as far as you can in that direction, in order to stretch the neck muscles
5. Very carefully! Tilt your head to (both left and right) the side. Using your hand, gently push your head further to that direction, you will start to feel the stretch in that side of your neck: don't do it if it hurts!
"You, who take more pleasure in the ruin of a womans reputation than in the indearments of her love, reproach me not with yourself and I defy you to name the man that can lay a blemish to my fame" As you can see, this is a very wordy sentence-it's long too which doesn't help. I also found that there was little punctuation in it, which gave me the impression that it was definitely one of my lines that I had to deliver straight out. I found that I could just about get to the word yourself and then struggle for breath so I needed a way to last the whole sentence. I found that if I took a breath before the line, and then an even bigger breath straight after saying the word you. This way I had more breath to get to the word love. From here on I could reach the end of the sentence without struggling for breath. After breaking it down like you can see I've done above, it felt a lot easier to say this line and it also helped a lot when I finally became a lot more angry as the character.
"Whoever she be, may all the harm I wish her is, may she love him as well as I do and may he give her as much cause to hate him" This is the first time we see Loveit getting really angry and from the audience's point of view, we are just beginning to understand as to why she's angry. This is definitely the part I struggled with the most, as Sally spent a lot of time trying to encourage me to be more angry and directed me to pace up and down the stage- the pacing was the second most hardest thing as to me it just felt exposing and silly because I could tell I wasn't doing it with the anger I should've been. So before this line, I have been pacing for the entire scene, so I found I was really quite out of breath at this point, and it didn't help that this line was at her most angry! I found that it worked best if I ran to the word is then paused to breath, and then continued the line at an even quicker speed to enhance the emotion. This allowed me to deliver the line much quicker than trying to do it all on one breath; which I found clearly wasn't working!
"I would die to satisfy that, but will not to save you from a thousand racks, do a shameless thing to please your vanity" This line is one of my favourite lines! It's such a powerful line and should be delivered with as much power. Words such as 'die' 'not' 'you' 'racks' are all words that needed emphasis. I found that I could do this line quite well with only one breath, but it needed to be delivered powerfully so I found that I could take in a enough breath when saying the line from. I managed to do this without making it too obvious and I found it worked a lot better than actually pausing on the comma; because I was so desperate to make it fiery and powerful!
"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2
1,2
1,2
1,2
1
1
1
1"
This is just a simple exercise I find I can do anywhere at anytime. At the same time of doing this, I rotate my jaw a lot, i.e. open and close my mouth, as well as moving it in circular motions.
Doing all this really helped to relax my jaw, it felt a lot lighter after this week of regular warming up's and rotations etc.
I then moved onto working on my neck and shoulders. I combined the two because for me, I notice that if my shoulders ache so does my neck and vice versa. They are very closely linked in general but I notice they are very much in sync for me whenever I ache in those areas. I find the best method for me releasing tension in these areas; and its just simple rotations and stretches:
1. Rolling my shoulders back and forward. 10 times each way
2. Linking your hands behind your back, pulling your arms to a right angle from your back.
Stretching your upper back as well as separating your shoulders
3. Hug yourself! Really tightly pulling your arms all around your body- which again separates your shoulder muscles and stretches them.
4. Neck. Look left, look right, up and then down. Each time holding the position and making sure to look as far as you can in that direction, in order to stretch the neck muscles
5. Very carefully! Tilt your head to (both left and right) the side. Using your hand, gently push your head further to that direction, you will start to feel the stretch in that side of your neck: don't do it if it hurts!
These are nice and simple exercises that can be done anywhere at any time. I made sure I was doing these various shoulder, neck and jaw exercises daily for this week in particular, as well as keeping up my weekly yoga classes. So talking to you on Friday, I have noticed a real difference, my shoulders feel a lot lighter and definitely free from a lot of tension I had perhaps been holding in them earlier on this week. Tuesday my shoulders seemed to ache more than they did on Monday, but I think this is probably because I was exercising them a lot at the beginning of this experiment. My jaw also seemed lighter and it clicked less which I can assume means the tension that was held here has definitely decreased.
Articulation/Pace:
A big part of my articulation is the speed at which I talk at. Like I'm sure I've said many times before, there has been many times that I have been told that I speak too quickly. I have never noticed it in myself before but it really affected my work in Man Of Mode, as Mrs Loveit! I understood that she sort of had to speak quickly because whenever she did speak she was angry; and most of us speed up what we're saying when we're angry in order to get the anger out correctly. But whenever I said my lines in rehearsals, I was told I was speaking too quickly and I think the only reason why this wasn't working at the time was because I wasn't playing Mrs Loveit as an angry character. I also understood that my articulation was absolutely necessary in order for people to understand and begin to like Loveit, which happens as soon as the audience begin to know her. This is where the breath control exercises I taught myself for this week in particular came in handy:
To begin my little self-created breath exercises, I simply laid on the floor and focussed fully on my breathing. Making sure my body was fully relaxed, arms either side of my body with my palms facing the ceiling. My legs flat to the floor with my feet relaxed. Making sure the bottom of your spine is touching the floor.
I made sure I was breathing into each and every part of my body. First imagining my feet being filled with air, then my lower legs then my upper legs etc. Each time relaxing these parts of the body. Paying attention to the movements my breathing was causing upon my stomach. Watching it rise and fall with each breath. (When standing) I watched my breath again, watching to see if my shoulders moved with each breath (something that shouldn't be happening.)
Spotlight: E-News from Theatrefolk, Issue 38- Lindsay Price: https://www.theatrefolk.com/spotlights/just-breathe-breathing-exercises-for-student-actors
This article above taught me to ask my myself questions about my breathing such as "Do your shoulders rise and fall with each breath?" or "do you ever forget to breathe?" The last questions might seem like an odd one however there have been so many times on stage that I realise I've forgotten to breathe and so my next few lines are delivered alongside me trying to take a big intake of breath. There was a key moment in Man Of Mode that this happened for me: It was when Loveit was at her most angry stage towards Dorimant. This bit in particular was Loveit really shouting and pacing up and down the stage so at this point I was already out of breath with the nerves of being on stage. At this point, I heard one of my lines come out really weak and stuttered slightly whilst saying it. I managed to finish it off a lot stronger, but noticed that I had dropped my articulation when finishing it off. This signalled to me how important breathing and taking it slowly when speaking is for us actors!
After completing the very simple breath exercise, I began to ran through my lines in order (missing out any lines said by characters in-between my lines etc) I found that because my breathing pattern was already at a very steady pace even before I began running my lines, that the lines I was saying were a lot easier to get out, as it felt like I had more than enough breath to say them; whereas I had previously noticed I rushed them in order to get them out on the very last bit of breath I had before taking a big intake of breath. Lines that I struggled with in terms of breath were:
"You, who take more pleasure in the ruin of a womans reputation than in the indearments of her love, reproach me not with yourself and I defy you to name the man that can lay a blemish to my fame" As you can see, this is a very wordy sentence-it's long too which doesn't help. I also found that there was little punctuation in it, which gave me the impression that it was definitely one of my lines that I had to deliver straight out. I found that I could just about get to the word yourself and then struggle for breath so I needed a way to last the whole sentence. I found that if I took a breath before the line, and then an even bigger breath straight after saying the word you. This way I had more breath to get to the word love. From here on I could reach the end of the sentence without struggling for breath. After breaking it down like you can see I've done above, it felt a lot easier to say this line and it also helped a lot when I finally became a lot more angry as the character.
"Whoever she be, may all the harm I wish her is, may she love him as well as I do and may he give her as much cause to hate him" This is the first time we see Loveit getting really angry and from the audience's point of view, we are just beginning to understand as to why she's angry. This is definitely the part I struggled with the most, as Sally spent a lot of time trying to encourage me to be more angry and directed me to pace up and down the stage- the pacing was the second most hardest thing as to me it just felt exposing and silly because I could tell I wasn't doing it with the anger I should've been. So before this line, I have been pacing for the entire scene, so I found I was really quite out of breath at this point, and it didn't help that this line was at her most angry! I found that it worked best if I ran to the word is then paused to breath, and then continued the line at an even quicker speed to enhance the emotion. This allowed me to deliver the line much quicker than trying to do it all on one breath; which I found clearly wasn't working!
"I would die to satisfy that, but will not to save you from a thousand racks, do a shameless thing to please your vanity" This line is one of my favourite lines! It's such a powerful line and should be delivered with as much power. Words such as 'die' 'not' 'you' 'racks' are all words that needed emphasis. I found that I could do this line quite well with only one breath, but it needed to be delivered powerfully so I found that I could take in a enough breath when saying the line from. I managed to do this without making it too obvious and I found it worked a lot better than actually pausing on the comma; because I was so desperate to make it fiery and powerful!
Breaking down my most quickly-said lines really helped come rehearsals this week. I felt a lot calmer about performing back my scene in front of my class, and because I was feeling calmer, I slowed down a lot on my other lines, including the ones I have just run you through. I felt my work on Loveit is slowly improving, I can see she is nowhere near the standard I want to perform her as but there were elements of me accessing the anger today and yesterday a bit more than there has been-so hopefully this will boost my confidence a little.
Projection:
Rubber chicken has go to be one of my favourite projection exercises! It's silly, fun and energetic. But it also gets us to use our voices in completely different volumes.
"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2,3,4
1,2
1,2
1,2
1,2
1
1
1
1"
So the sequence is as seen above. Each time you say the numbers you shake your right arm, then your left arm, then your right leg etc. The focus of this exercise though is your voice, and it's up to you as to how you want to say it. We often begin this by performing it in our deepest voices-accessing our chest resonators. After doing it this way, we change it and perform it in our head voices- accessing our head resonators. You can also do this shouting and then whispering. It can work any way you could possibly want to perform it in; which is why I like it so much. I find that its just a very easy way to warm up both the voice, resonators included, as well as the body. I used this a lot during Man Of Mode, as it was a very good way for me to get hyped up and angry in preparation for Loveit. It also warmed up my voice!
So although this week wasn't too heavily based upon voice and how it is in performances etc, it was very much working on the preparation of the voice in order to have it ready for a performance. This included improving my posture, my breath control and projection.
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