Make The Most Of Your Voice Blog

Archive for June, 2010

I’m not Ben’s mum but if I were I’d want to go into the Big Brother House and give him a big hug. I’d also want to give him a big talking to and tell him to stop behaving like a wet weekend in Skeggy.
What’s with the whining? Ok, you’ve done some silly stuff, but you were big enough to apologise. Now let it go. Shabby knows a moment when she hears one and as soon as you went to her cap in hand, she seized that moment and reeled you in. As her voice grew stronger and she jumped on the sofa to give herself even more power, your voice got weaker and weaker. When she said “I don’t like you”, it was as cruel as being back in the children’s playground – but you’d asked for it.
Get wise, stop whispering around and start thinking about who you like (apart from Caoimhe and Mario) and not who dislikes you. Your American game show accent was a laugh – you sounded like a party animal instead of a party pooper, but easy does it or you’ll drive them all mad. Maybe your spirits were lifted by being sucked up to for an afternoon by Shabby – if so, oh Ben, that’s so sad.
It’s going to be a pity if either Ben or Shabby go too early. They are the “performers” of the group and bring in a lot of entertainment value. As time goes on and the real stuff starts to come out, we won’t miss them so much.

Have you noticed how the balance in the strong voices department is with the girls this year?

What is ATC’s production of Eurydice about?  The catastrophe of the death of one of a young couple, madly in love and just starting out?   The frustration of a parent not being able to get through to their child?  The victory of death over life?  Fear of the unknown?  Is it attempting to address all of these?

The most exciting part of the play is when Eurydice (played by Ony Uhiara in a way that says she’s going to have a great career), is enticed away from her wedding celebration into a penthouse apartment by a “nasty, interesting man” who gives her a letter from her dead father and tries to seduce her.  She gets away but trips and falls down the stairs as she hurries,  fatally injuring herself.
She cascades down into the underworld of death.

Once in the underworld she meets her father, who comforts her.  Geff Francis who plays her father gives the most powerful and moving performance of the play.  In this scene I waited in vain to find out what the father’s letter to Eurydice was about.  She had lost her life retrieving it but the audience was left in the dark as to what was in it.  The renowned scene where Orpheus comes to rescue Eurydice from the underworld, something that can only be done if he doesn’t turn around to look at her, is well executed.  Eurydice is encouraged by her father and the Stones (wonderfully played by Marsha Henry, Becci Gemmell and Ben Addis) to follow him, and not turn around, but Eurydice is unsure that it is Orpheus (and who can blame her after all the trickery she’s been subjected to).   It seems she can’t hear Orpheus’ music and so she calls to him and he turns round to look at her.   She is propelled back into an underworld that for some reason known to the director is worse than before.  Her father has gone for a second dunk in the river and lies supine and senseless, when Eurydice finds him she goes the same route and symbolically splashes her face with water for the second dunk in the river.  She lies down next to her father.  Do they go to an under, underworld?  We, the audience don’t know.

I would have welcomed a prologue given by the man who plays the several different parts of the “nasty” of the piece (Rhys Rusbatch) inviting us to take part in this story and giving an outline of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus.  Given that so much is said in the play about Orpheus’s music it would have been great to hear music that we could immediately recognise him by.  There are some lovely tunes throughout but no signature music that gives him the magnificence he needs to establish him as a virtuoso.  We are told that the music is heard in rain drops in the underworld and we do hear discordant sounds, but we the audience know through the dialogue and action that Eurydice is in the underworld, we need a burst of the real stuff when Orpheus is involved.

The play is set in the 50s and the author’s note  that “Euydice and Orpheus should be played as though they are a little too young and a little too in love”, has been taken a little too seriously by the director.  There is a lovely moment at the beginning when they are lying down and there is the calm of the certainty of love between them, but this is soon lost in their high jinx playing.  Osi Okerafor playing Orpheus, has a particularly difficult job here as you can sense the feeling of a good actor trying to get out.

This production overflows with action and movement and it is wonderfully set.  In the end does it matter what the crux of it was about?  Like a good painting the viewer is left to use their own perception.

Frances Parkes

How often did your mum tell you to take a deep breath when you were young and had to say something in public?  I know mine did.

What you actually do is breathe in so deeply on top of breath that’s already there  that your lungs get the information that you have to breathe out completely in order to take a clean deep breath in.

If you try to speak after the initial deep breath on top of breath that’s already in your lungs you’re going to have to let some breath out anyway before you vocalise and that in itself will reduce the power of your voice.
Why not allow yourself time to do the deep breathing before you get up to speak?  No one will be aware of your preparation except you.   A simple way of doing this is releasing slowly all the breath from your lungs and then breathing in deeply 3 times.  You can count out for 8 while expelling the air and in for 5 before the next breath release.

It’s particularly good if you’re sitting down on a chair with a high back as you can feel the deep air being released from the base of your lungs inside the ribcage against the back of the chair as you breathe out and filling up again as you breathe in.  It has the added benefit of taking your mind off all the scary faces waiting in the audience for you to speak.  If you’re standing you can still perform the exercise and it has the effect of grounding you and making you more stable on your feet.

With this simple preparation you won’t have too much breath in your lungs and you’ll be able to speak cleanly on your first outward breath.

This plus other simple techniques that we use in our voice training programmes at F Parkes Associates www.maxyourvoice.com enable you to concentrate at once on what you want to say not how you’re saying it and allow the process to become enjoyable for everyone.   While you’ll get sympathy from some of your audience when your nerves are revealed in your voice, most of them will feel edgy on your behalf.
Public speakers require different use of their breath flow to singers.  Of course it’s always great to increase your lung capacity and singing is great for doing this but the techniques for delivery are widely different.