Voice

Being able to control how much air comes out as you speak allows you to speak loudly without damaging your voice. It also lets you choose where to pause. This lesson teaches students the basics of breath support and exercises to practice controlling the breath. Students will demonstrate their ability to control their breath support by participating in a series of exercises, culminating with an attempt to say all fifty states of the union in one breath.

Students will demonstrate how to use vocal aspects in character creation. The lesson teaches students how to create a specific character voice,considering volume, rate and pitch.

Students are introduced to the concept of what makes a good voice and how to achieve it through breathing and proper posture.

Students explore resonance and the resonators.

Students explore articulation and the articulators.

Students continue their exploration of commedia dell’arte with an introduction to “stock characters” and learning how to implement a character walk.

This is a simple project. Your students are going to tell a joke to the class. The reason to use a joke or a riddle (rather than a poem, prose piece, monologue, or scene) is that students in the audience will want to hear the answer. They will be more engaged in the simple joke or riddle than passively listening to something else.

Students will demonstrate their ability to project. Projection is speaking loudly without yelling. It is the technique actors use to be heard when performing without damaging their voices. Students learn how to project and practice the skill culminating in an assessed exercise.

The voice is a powerful instrument. Beyond being the vehicle with which an actor delivers their dialogue, the voice can suggest emotion, subtext, character personality, location, and more. There are a variety of vocal tools an actor can use to communicate effectively with an audience. This lesson covers tone.