Warm up games

Tongue twisters

In the Victorian era, people who were wealthy or privileged were usually very posh and spoke with a clear RP accent. Therefore, it is very important to have clear articulation and diction. Tongue twisters are very beneficial for strengthening and stretching the muscles involved in speech and noticing habitual speech patterns. For example, I find it difficult to deviate between a 'th' sound and a 'f' sound. Therefore, I found these tongue twisters very useful as I could practice this sound to make it clearer and more pronounced. This also helped me to open my mouth more which means I can used more expression in a performance. Overall, this exercise was very useful as it helped me improve my posh accent and made what I was saying much clearer on stage.

Songs

We sang two songs called 'Heart and soul' and 'Red.' We started off by singing these together and then in cannon in order to help us to focus and be aware of our surroundings. We also experimented with different ways of singing these e.g. soft/quiet and then loud/confident. This was useful as it allowed us to use different intentions behind the words and see which was is most appropriate/suitable. This can easily be transferred into our acting as we must try and find the best way to say a line considering the given circumstances of the spoken dialogue. When you are speaking and projecting your voice, you use the vocal cords (soft tissue) and the inner muscles of the larynx (the muscles that control the closing of your cords). Warming these muscles up by singing loosens those muscles, helps to remove excess mucous and reduces the risk of injury or strain on our voice. Singing also helps us control our breath by sustaining a note and increasing in volume. If we control our breathing, we will be more relaxed on stage and will be able to convey more power in our characterisation. Singing in a warm up can give an understanding of proper vocal cord closure, optimum speaking pitch, and allows us to deal with difficult vocal situations. It is also beneficial for handling emotional dialogue and sounds, such as shouting or screaming, without damaging the voice.

Physical

We started off on the floor, lying in semi supine and worked on our breathing. We began with short breaths and our breathing slowly got deeper and slower. It is important to control our breathing as I explained earlier. We started to hum in order to warm up our vocal chords, the hums then turned into creating a loud vowel sound such as 'Ah' or 'Ooh.' This allowed our jaw to soften and relax and we were able to control and experiment the volume and pitch in our voice. Again, we could easily transfer this into a scene in order to show emotion and how this affects our vocal choices on stage.  After this, we went on to all fours and controlled our abdominal muscles by widening and lengthening our backs as we breathed. We were also in prayer position in order to create a greater sensation of the ribs opening across the back. We slowly rolled up into standing. When we stood up, we felt taller and had great posture. Furthermore, we felt very focused and relaxed. This helped me get into the zone and feel much more comfortable on stage. We then created the physicality of our character and walked around the room repeating one of our lines from the play. This exercise allowed me to concentrate a lot more and get rid of any distractions. This meant I could get into the mind frame of the character and could think as them which helped improve my characterisation, Therefore, it was highly beneficial for the performance.