Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre

A Practical Guide

Chris Palmer

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350011267
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre is the first book to combine traditional actor vocal training with musical theatre training, offering support and guidance for performers seeking to train their spoken voice specifically for singing and performing in musical theatre. Performers in musical theatre are working harder than ever. The shifting and extreme nature of the modern musical theatre repertoire requires performers capable of mastering musicianship, singing and dancing while at the same time providing convincing and clear performances as actors. Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre will help train musical theatre performers in the longer modes of voice needed to create convincing and moving performances. Ideal for the triple-threat performer, Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre features exercises for performers, tips for teachers and online video resources, allowing for a focused and outcome-oriented training of vocal techniques for musical theatre performers.

1 Posture, Alignment and Neutral Plus

Keywords: awaken, posture, neutral, neutral plus, neutral minus, activate, musical theatre performer (MTP)

You are cold when you spend so much time looking at the ground, you forget the sun is there to warm you. NATIVE AMERICAN SAYING

Introduction

What is considered good posture? What do voice, singing and dance teachers mean when they say ‘I want to see you activate the ideal or correct posture’ (sometimes known as alignment)? Certainly, I know from my own experience as a singer, dancer and actress that each of these teachers asked me to apply a variety of adjustments in posture, depending on the skill I was working on. Generally, we use the word ‘alignment’ to understand body use at its most fundamental efficiency, with the engagement of breath management (or breath support), according to the particular skill that is being worked on.

In this chapter, we will develop an understanding of what our bodies are capable of by exploring our habitual posture, and what each discipline for musical theatre training expects from good, efficient and healthy posture. The way we habitually sit or stand has often been in response to how we face the world. It can be because we have poor habits, from carrying heavy bags, to being short (like myself) and thrusting the chin forward, and of course standing in ‘good’ posture can often make us feel self-conscious, as we expand our chests or stand tall, feeling exposed as if we are baring our bellies. For the musical theatre performer (MTP) in most cases posture and alignment may have been over-corrected in order to fulfil a dance posture criteria, which in turn may have affected the singing or speaking voice through tense muscles in the lower back, belly, legs and buttocks.

The MTP has a range of specialized skills that need to come together fully to perform safely and efficiently, managing their breath and posture to be an effective and healthy performer. Isolating and awakening different parts of the body is fundamental to understanding how the body works and how to continue to reproduce sounds and skills night after night in long-running musicals.

There are many approaches to awaken our understanding of ideal posture or correct alignment, for fluid efficient movement, such as yoga, t’ai chi, pilates, Feldenkrais or Alexander Technique among many others. These skills can also be used for everyday life, but they hold a special place in actor training, and are an excellent accompaniment to the overall training of an MTP. All these practices are about self-observation, in order to adjust or simply notice without judgement what our bodies and voices may ‘do’ under a relaxed state, an engaged state and a performative state.

When we are young, as in ‘baby young’, our posture is perceived to be ‘correct’ in that the stacking of the body parts of feet, knees, hips, ribcage, shoulders, neck and head are in an ‘ideal alignment’. Look at a young child of, say, two years of age, sitting on the floor. Their upper body is ‘aligned’, the stacking of the vertebrae is ‘correct’ and once they have mastered the weight of the head and neck fully, their body is aligned for optimum use as they awaken the process of walking and talking. Typically, as we get older our bodies change and we start to use our structure in a non-constructive manner. Our interaction with mobile phones, emails, working on computers, laptops or iPads, for example, means we often droop our necks to meet the device, which will inevitably have an impact on our posture. The Alexander Technique is a wonderful way to awaken the ‘neutral spine’ and engage with effective and efficient posture for voice and speech. Once we have explored neutral, we will move on to look at neutral plus (N+), a term I have devised to investigate the many forms of neutral that the MTP faces. Therefore, to understand the posture of N+, one must first understand the term neutral.

Feel it first

Warm-up (Video)

•Stretch your arms above your head and reach for the sky, clasping your hands together. Keep the shoulders low, then release the arms down.

•Next stretch your arms out to the side and reach for something just beyond your fingertips. Then release the arms down.

•Next flop forward reaching down to the floor and hang there.

•Now slowly come up to standing tall, and stretch again, letting out a yawn.

•Raise your right arm up and stretch over to the other side, then with your left hand pat all over your ribs letting out a sound. Then repeat on the other side.

•Now circle your hips one way, then the other.

•Shake out your arms and hands and let out any sound.

•Now shake out a leg as if a dog has attached itself to you. Say ‘get off’, and then shake out the other leg as if a tiger is coming at you. Say ‘go away’.

•Next shake out your buttocks, and finally shake out the whole body.

•Raise your shoulders and then release them down to a breath or sigh.

•Keeping the chin parallel to the floor, rotate the head by taking the chin slowly over to the left shoulder and then to the right shoulder.

•Take your chin to your chest and circle your nose in a semi-circle from one shoulder over to the other shoulder.

•Give yourself a hug by wrapping your arms around yourself and then bending forward and breathe, letting out a sigh. This will open the back and make you aware of your breath as it moves your ribs and back.

•Circle the foot one way and then the other releasing sound, this could be a hum. Now stand on tiptoe and slowly release your feet down to the floor.

•Now swing your left leg from front to back, always being aware of the breath.

•Now swing your right leg from side to side, again being aware of the breath.

Posture and alignment (Video)

•Stand with your feet in parallel, roughly hip distance apart, the knees should feel soft, as if liquid oil is in the knee joint. Imagine your tailbone or coccyx is hanging down, lengthening in your thoracic spine, and then lengthen the neck vertebrae or (cervical spine) by imagining a balloon attached to the head, feel your head floating upwards away from your body.

•Your neck should feel long, with your head able to nod yes and no. There should be an overall sense of lengthening. The shoulders and arms should hang down by the side, relaxed. The weight ratio should be about 50 per cent at the front of the foot and 50 per cent at the back of the foot, which feels evenly ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword I
• Foreword II
• Preface for Teachers
• Preface for Students
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Posture, Alignment and Neutral Plus
• 2 Breath, Dance and Movement
• 3 Building the Voice
• 4 Pitch and Tune
• 5 Articulation
• 6 Resonance
• Appendix 1: Sample Curriculum
• Appendix 2: Bibliography and Resources
• Index
• Copyright