Finding Your Voice

A step-by-step guide for actors

Barbara Houseman

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781780010427
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

A Complete Voice Training Manual For Actors

A simple, step-by-step manual, written by an RSC voice coach, which offers everything that an actor needs to work on their voice. Suitable for actors at all levels, from students and young professionals to established and experienced actors. Drama teachers in schools and committed amateur actors who want to increase their vocal skills and understanding will also find it invaluable.

Includes sections on:

• Preparation
• Body Work
• Breathing and Support
• Breathing Into Sound: Supporting the Voice
• Releasing the Sound
• Filling out the Sound: Resonance
• Extending the Sound: Range
• Shaping the Sound: Articulation
• Trouble-Shooting.

Each chapter begins with a brief introduction, then clearly and succinctly sets out a sequence of relevant exercises - accompanied by simple diagrams - ending with a summary of what we have learned.

'Brilliantly guides the actor using exercises and tools that can revolutionise the voice. It's a boon!' Joseph Fiennes

'Barbara's work is simple and practical, encouraging each actor to be free and fluid with their own voice... Very inspiring' Emily Watson

'Barbara has a great understanding of the way that actors' anxieties can affect their voice. Her tone is calm, reassuring and good humoured' Niamh Cusack

1

Before You Start

Having given you five key tools to work with in the introduction, I would like to add a few reassurances and some advice on how to approach the work.

A FEW REASSURANCES

There is no need to spend ages practising

It is the regularity of practice that is important. It is much better to practice for a short time every day than a long time once a week.

Also, you don’t have to do all the exercises at one time. You can separate them into smaller, more manageable chunks that can be done at various points during the day.

Some exercises can be practised as you go about your daily life. This is an excellent way of practising, since the aim is for the work to become natural.

It is better to practise each exercise for only a brief time – two or three minutes at most. After this the quality of attention falls off and you will find you revert to old habits, which is discouraging.

There is no need to think about your voice or any of the exercises whilst you’re on stage

It is neither helpful nor necessary to think about the voice, or voice exercises, whilst you are on stage.

If you practise with focus and attention, and warm up as suggested, then, on stage, you can forget about your voice and fully engage with the text and the other actors.

If you do find that you still have problems in performance, look in the trouble-shooter index and work as it suggests. If the problem persists, then you need to find a voice teacher to work with to discover the root of the problem.

Whatever route you take, once on stage forget about your voice!

You won’t end up sounding false

All the exercises are designed to develop your own voice to its full potential. To make it more responsive to and expressive of your feelings and thoughts.

It is a good idea to think of developing your voice for general use, rather than just having a ‘stage’ or ‘performance’ voice. This way it will have greater flexibility and feel more owned. Also, you are less likely to tire or damage it. A great deal of vocal tiredness and damage is the result of demanding social use rather than demanding performance use!

You don’t need to get rid of your own accent

It is a nonsense to feel you have to shift from your own accent to ‘so-called’ Standard English or RP to work as an actor.¹ You do need to work on your voice to find its full clarity, richness and expression. If you can’t be understood or your voice has a limited expression, the richness of your thoughts and feelings will never be communicated.

You may choose to learn Standard English as an accent, for that is what it is, it is not a neutral. There is no such thing. It simply happens to be the accent spoken by those in power so it is called Standard English. If the seat of government and power had historically been in Liverpool rather than London, then Liverpudlian would be Standard English.

Nor is it necessary that classical plays be done in Standard English. What classical plays do need is an owning of the language, by which I mean looking not only at what is said but also at how it is said: the words used and the images behind the words (see the exercises Three Times Through and Sharing the Pictures with the Listener in Chapter 7).

Certain plays, such as those of Coward, Wilde and Rattigan may need a certain way of speaking, but this is as much about character, attitude and class as it is about accent. The accent is an expression of who the characters are and how they interact with the world and so developing the appropriate accent is part of building the character.

So, please, work in your own accent on the voice exercises in this book. By all means, if you are working on a play, where you have to speak with a different accent, then go through your voice exercises in that accent. That is a good way of really owning the accent and ensuring you can use it freely and healthily.

Technique is not the actor’s enemy

Technique does not need to lead to work that is artificial and studied. Technique does not need to be an enemy of truth. Technique can help you fly.

When you have a role you are happy with, in a play you believe in, working with a director and fellow actors you feel at ease with and stimulated by, your voice and body, imagination and creativity work wonderfully well. However, when all these elements are not in place and you feel less secure, that is when technique comes into its own. It is your rescue remedy. It helps you to re-find your best work, to re-enter your creative space, and your technique for doing this will be as personal as your acting itself.

What I have noticed about very experienced actors, who turn out consistently good work, by which I mean fresh, exciting non-predictable work, is that they are able to build a creative space around themselves in which they can flourish, however unhelpful the circumstances. This is the technique I am interested in: exercises that enable you to do your best work, to feel free and creative wherever and with whoever you are working.

Anyway you already know how to use your voice and body well. It is just a question of relearning it!

Unless there is a physiological or psychological problem, all babies can scream the house down, for hours on end, without damaging their voices. All healthy toddlers have great posture and an expressive voice, full of range and colour, which they can use incessantly without getting a sore throat.

So you do already know how to do it. It is all simply buried under a collection of less helpful habits you’ve acquired along the way.

This work is really a way of returning to your best self, your most expressive self. Once you have done that, then, the more you use the muscles the stronger they will get.

HOW TO WORK

I have already talked about sureness, commitment, awareness, ease and interest and how these can help your work. Below are some more ways of working that can take the pain out of voice work and make it much easier.

Check your approach

How you approach the work is as important as the work itself. So often it is approached tentatively, which de-energises, or with excess effort, which strains. Think about how you have approached voice work in the past.

Have you always drawn back from it a little? If you have you may have found that none of the exercises ever seemed to work fully, that it all felt a little flat and mechanical.

Or have you always tried too hard? If you have, you may have found that you could never do the work without tension creeping in somewhere; that it left you feeling all knotted up.

Try to approach the work with a quiet sureness. Assume that you will be able to do the exercises, even if you have found voice work difficult in the past. Check every so often: ‘Am I drawing back or trying too hard?’

Vocal energy and expression come from vocal muscles that are committed and alive, rather than holding back or grabbing and pushing.

Keep the mind light

Our thoughts have a powerful effect on our body and, therefore, on our voice. A tight mind will lead to a tight body and so to a tight voice. Thoughts of pushing and striving to achieve lead to physical and vocal over-effort whilst thoughts of fear and doubt lead to physical and vocal holding back.

The good news is that if you work with a more relaxed and open mind you can influence the body and voice in a positive way. I talked in the introduction about working with sureness, commitment and interest to bring energy. I also spoke about the importance of working with ease. To achieve physical and vocal ease you need to find ease in the mind. Working with an attitude of patience, of tolerance, of kindness and generosity towards yourself, as I have already suggested, all help to bring about mental and, therefore, physical and vocal ease.

Use mental focus and direction to avoid excess physical effort

Successful voice work relies as much on mental focus and attention as it does on physical effort.

If you try to achieve any activity through physical effort alone you will end up using more muscle power than you need and there is a very good chance that you won’t necessarily use the best muscles for the job.

Using mental focus or direction to stimulate activity leads to much more accurate and efficient use of the muscles, which means that activities are achieved with greater ease and flexibility.

Sports people work in this way. If a tennis player is trying to improve his or her forehand stroke, as well as spending time practising the mechanics of the stroke, they may watch examples of a good forehand on video and then try to visualise the whole stroke. Then, the brain is left to turn this visualisation into action.

In this way, the brain is given the whole pattern and left to work out the best way for the body to achieve the activity, which means it can engage the best muscles for the job.

There are three vital components to this process – imagery, touch and mental bounce

Imagery The use of imagery is often hotly debated, with many seeing it as ‘airy fairy’ and imprecise.

My view is that the problem lies in the way imagery is used, not in the use of imagery itself.

An image works because it is simple and yet it carries a complex set of instructions from the brain to the body. You only need to focus on one thing – the image – but, as a result, a complex set of processes is set in action.

In order for imagery to work, the image needs to be precise and meaningful to the person using it. I always explain to people that my image is a starting point and they should feel free to adapt it or change it altogether until it works for them.

It is also important the person focuses on the image one hundred percent. Often imagery doesn’t work because the person is not paying complete attention to the image. Instead, they may be checking to see if the old, unwanted behaviour is still occurring or they may be consciously ‘doing’ because they don’t trust the image to work by itself.

So, it is important to find the right image and, then, put full attention on that image and trust that the desired activity will occur.

Touch Obviously, you need to focus quite precisely on the area that you wish the image to activate. Otherwise the brain may send a general message, which will activate more muscles than necessary or even activate the wrong muscles altogether.

This is where touch plays such a vital part. If you place your hands on the area you wish to move, that helps the mind to focus on that area.

Imagine the brain’s problem. There are millions of motor nerve cells in the brain, which transmit instructions for movement all over the body. If you are trying to build a new behaviour, the brain will be unsure as to which nerve, or nerves, to send the message down. So it may not send the message at all, or else it may send it down the nerves it always has done, so causing the old behaviour, or it may send the message to the general area causing more muscles to work than is necessary or desirable.

By placing your hands very specifically and firmly on the area you wish to be activated, the brain gets sensory feedback, via the sensory nerves, and has a much more accurate idea of which motor nerves to send the message down.

Imagine, for example, you are trying to teach yourself to raise one eyebrow. You may well hold the eyebrow you don’t want to move still with one hand and move the other eyebrow up and down with the other hand until the brain works out which nerves will activate the required muscles.

Working with imagery and touch will enable your mind to focus more quickly and help you achieve results without extraneous e...