Warm-Up

Warm-ups for both rehearsals and performances are very important, they help to gain focus and prepare the body and voice for the things to come.

Here are a few of the exercises we undertook to warm up...

Sirening

We said the word 'king' and on the 'ng' sound we went up and down in pitch in a sirening fashion. This warms the voice up and allows us to use our voices fully without damaging them. This is absolutely vital for an actor as in a large proportion of plays, especially period dramas such as Coram Boy, speech is central and the ability to make ones voice heard and not damage it is key to giving a great and consistent performance. This exercise also brakes down the barriers that we hold stopping us from using our voices to the full amount they can be. Which allows us to be more open in rehearsals and explore things that we may not have previously.

Yoga

We would do a series of motions in connection with our breath. Breath is vital to any performance, being able to breath properly means you can enter the character to a greater extent and push the voice further with diction and projection. Opening the body up in this way allows character to come much more easily and be much more of a full body experience rather then just in the voice. Connecting the two in this warm-up exercise allowed me, as an actor, to enter a focused and prepared state of mind and body.

Pass the line 

This was a warm up exercise we did before each of the three performances, it consisted of all the actors walking around the space and then stopping. Someone would say the name of another actor and then one of their lines, sending it across the space at full performance level, this process was then repeated by the actor whose name was said. This exercise has many benefits for the actor, most obviously it gave me the chance to get used to speaking at the level at which I would have to throughout the performance. It also allowed us to connect as a group, saying the lines, moving around the space and calling each others names created a sense of company which we could then take on to the stage.