Week 3: Learning to breathe and bleat
January 18, 2012
18 November 2011
King George VI had Lionel Logue. We, at the RSC, have Michael Corbidge.
In my voice sessions this week, Michael informed me (politely) that I have faults in my breathing. Yes, breath faults.
Michael discussed three breath faults: being 'ahead of breath' (speaking too quickly for the air you're letting out); being 'under breath' (letting out too much air as you speak); and being 'behind breath' (letting out too little air to support the words).
The goal is to be 'on breath.'
Michael led me through exercises to engage my scapula, ground my feet, open my vocal folds, and breathe into my belly to deliver text on breath. Being on breath ensures you can be heard in every seat, and not injure your voice during a run of 179 shows. Yes, that's how many performances we have next year. I'm a nerd. I counted.
Michael had me read a bit of Trinculo in The Tempest, which includes:
'…yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks
like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor.'
(II. ii. 20-21.)
Then he told me to say just the vowels sounds in the text: aw, ey, æ, ow, aw, ew, uh, oo, eye, a, ow, aw, aah, æ, oo, eh, i, i, eh. Once I'd finished bleating like something in a petting-zoo, Michael had me repeat the lines. Paying attention to the vowel sounds made each word more resonant and made the meaning more accessible.
For another exercise, Michael set up a line of chairs, and we looked at this scene from The Comedy of Errors:
'Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a
woman, one that claims me, one that haunts me,
one that will have me.'
(III. ii. 79-81).
Every time there was a punctuation mark, I was to switch chairs. As I went from chair to chair, it became clear that Dromio of Syracuse is in such a state of shock that he cannot string more than five words together. I was huffing and puffing at the end of the exercise, which is how Dromio arrives in the scene, running away from a 'beast' of a woman.
Excellent. Now all I have to do is learn the lines, discover the characters, and play out each director's vision.
'Is there more toil?'
(The Tempest I. ii. 242)
Photo: Michael Corbidge, RSC vocal coach
(The What Country Friends is This? plays are; The Tempest, Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors, and are part of the RSC's World Shakespeare Festival)
by Ankur Bahl
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