Happy Friday, everyone! Rehearsals has been really busy for me this week. I’ve been exhausted every night.
The highlight of this week for me was my speaking skills, particularly on using my stage voice. I worked on my enunciations, made sure it was clear and that I was able to get the consonants. The process was meticulous when using my vocal tract muscles. I learned a lot on how we speak, project our voices and articulations rather than making it seem like I’m shouting on stage for the audience.
I had people to help me be able to articulate each words clearly, hit the consonants and vowels for each words in my lines. After these coaching sessions, I reflected on my speaking ability and became more aware of how I speak. I have had already developed habits of dropping consonants. So, when I say a sentence, all the words come out clustered. In other words, unintelligible to other hearing people. People who know me and are used to my voice, they are used to it and can understand me, but for those who are not familiar with my voice, they may have difficulty trying to decipher what I’m making out to say. This made me realize that there have been times when I am speaking to people, I see them craning out their necks and their faces show as if they’re trying to figure out a complicated puzzle. Often, I’ve assumed I might not be speaking loud enough but, clearly, it wasn’t clear enough. This week, it came to realization that I have not been getting the consonants. Definitely, learned a lot this week!
The things I’ve learned with speaking had me thinking of using principles and concepts I’ve learned on how to speak for teaching people how to sign American Sign Language. I can discuss more about this at another time.
For speaking, there are tongue placements I have to be aware of, learned the phonetics such as plosives, fricatives, africatives, etc. The three things I mentioned were the things I practiced on this week. I have never used my muscles in my vocal tract this much before. In the first few days, I was fine but later on in the week, I was feeling off and tired. Just last night, I was told I should massage my facial muscles, TMJ and my tongue. When I just did that last night, I felt that my muscles around the jaw area was stiff and sore! This is what happens when I use my stage voice for the first time to be sure I enunciate loud and clear!
Funny story, one of the actresses I’ve been rehearsing with this week shared a story that when she would be chatting with her boyfriend, her boyfriend would say, “You talk to loud!” And she would say, “No, I’m not!” She seemed to have caught herself not aware that she was speaking loud. This is because she is a stage performer and often uses her stage voice. Stage voice isn’t what people would normally use when just having an intimate conversation. It’s kind of similar to myself when I sign with other people, sometimes I catch myself signing with people in a way as if I’m signing to the public (E.g. public speaking).
The muscles I used to project my stage voice this week made me feel muscles I never felt before. Also, had to train myself to use my diaphragm to project my voice instead of from my lungs. Otherwise, it would sound like I’m shouting on stage.
This week has been facially exhausting for me. For the first time in a while, I just wanted to completely stop talking and just only sign for the rest of the evening to rest my facial muscles. It’s akin to working out or sports, when we use muscles we have not used in awhile, our muscles start to feel sore.
For the rest of the rehearsals, I look forward to continuing honing my speaking skills (i.e. stage voice) to make sure say my lines clear for the audience. I’ll have to continue to use my muscles around my vocal tract repetitively and continue to work on them.
For today, I’ll be giving these muscles a rest and have them ready for rehearsals again tomorrow! I have to say, I’m feeling anxious as we go but I’m definitely looking forward to performing for opening night!
See you all again soon!