3 days before our performance, we learn techniques that will help us perform in an audible volume. These techniques are very useful, and also very vital for an actor/ actress to enable the audience to hear his or her lines. Both projections and articulation are of tantamount of importance in stage performance in lieu of having audience that can comfortably hear and understand the play.
Our play is a realism play and therefore, actors may speak in a natural style, with soft and quiet speaking tone as how we always do in a daily conversation. However, that is allowed in theater, if and only if people don't have to strain to hear us. As an actor, I think most of us face some problems that hinder us form properly projecting our voices. In fact, in most cases, the problem does't lie with our volume, but other equally significant factors: Some of us don't know how to use our voices effectively to make it go louder, whilst some of us succumbed to nervousness, and as a result, we 'murmur' quietly.
Personally, I don't think I have the problem with vocal projection. On the other hand, I do have problems with articulation and, of course, nervousness. As I venture into my college life as an IBDP collegian, I feel that my confidence to speak in public gradually develops as time passes. I also realize that my confidence level is proportional to my articulation and my flow of thoughts. If I can articulate the words clearly with the correct pronunciations, and if my mind can transform my thoughts into sentences with proper grammar structures, I will have the confidence to speak in front of a large group.
To prepare our voice for the stage, Ms vale taught us these:
- Jaw flapper : Clasp your palms together, and hold them tight. Release all the tension on your face and relax your facial muscles. Shake your hand and your head to and forth repeatedly, and produce an 'URGHH' sound when you do so.
- Lemon face & Lion face : It's all in the name. Lemon face - the face when you eat something sour. Squeeze all your facial muscles, your eyes, your mouth and your cheek towards the the front your head and towards your mouth. Lion face - Stretch your face and open your mouth as wide as possible.
The Jaw Flapper, Lemon Face and Lion face exercise helps you loosen up your facial muscles and your jaw. This is very important for us to have a clearer articulation apart from helping us achieving a more salient facial expression while we are on stage. On stage, it is very important to relax your jaw and throat before trying to project. Breathing from the stomach, and not from your shoulders and chest, or the so-called deep-abdominal breathing can help too.
- Peanut Butter in the mouth : Make you tongue goes around your mouth, along your gums and your teeth and speak while you do it.
- Needling the thread : Sing comfortably from your highest note to your lowest note possible and sing it back up in a breath. Repeat it for a few times.
- The tongue twisters : <Red Leather Yellow Leather> and <The Tip of the Tongue, The Lips, the Teeth> are both good tongue twisters that will definitely help you in getting a better articulation.
- Humming : Hum any note and try to vary your dynamics/ volume. My vocal instructor once told me that humming is the safest way to test your vocal range and train them without hurting your vocal cords.
- Aiming archer's arrow : Find a target (3m to 5m, and above) and try your best to project your voice in an arch-like path. It's like shooting an arrow in a rainbow-like projectile motion. When you project your voice, try to imagine a thread is attached to your head, creating a lift that supports your head and direct your voice upwards.
Utilizing blocking often helps when it comes to projection of actor's voice. If a scene allows such blocking, staging characters further apart will help prompt the actor to have the propensity to speak louder. If the characters are right next to each other, they tend to resort to their normal "talking to a friend" voice. For this production, however, we are applying the concept of Realism, and hence, blocking can't be manipulated much in order to keep the show as organic and authentic as possible.
