Stage Speaking Exercises: Getting Your Voice Heard

Are you satisfied with the way you speak? Maybe you would like to stop chattering when you are nervous? Do not whisper, lowering your eyes, but calmly defend your opinion? Finally get over the fact that every time you have to perform, your throat catches? To look the interlocutor directly in the eye?

Voice can tell a lot about us. We do not know how to speak loudly – it means that for some reason we do not release our natural energy, strength. We speak monotonously – maybe we just do not have enough game, and not only in voice, but also in life? We go astray or chatter against our will – that means it’s time to deal with what is happening in our life not of our will.

If you don’t like your own timbre, it’s time to find your “own”, natural sound. And to understand that one voice sounds like a violin, another like a cello, a third like a double bass, and none is worse than the rest.

Here are some exercises to get your voice heard. They are made by students in theater universities.

Proper breathing is when it’s easy for you

It is important to listen to yourself: in some places in a conversation we slow down our breathing, slow down. Some exhale, some inhale. Isn’t that why he intercepts the voice at the crucial moment?

Work on the voice begins with the correct breathing. “Breathe deeply, so that it rises up – forget about it,” says Philip Khitrov, stage speech teacher. – Proper breathing – abdominal. Not only among us humans, but throughout the animal world: have you ever seen a cat that would breathe from its chest?

Our speech is a resounding breath. This means that you do not need to take full lungs of air, as before jumping into the water. Our goal is a powerful short breath and a light, unconscious exhalation without tension. Learn to “breathe with your back” – to feel how the ribs open, like the gills of a fish.

But the most important feeling that you should have before speaking is that it is easy for you! So, as it is easy in the sea to soar above the depths with a mask, or slide on skis, or roll down the mountain. Everyone has such a memory – find it and remember this picture on the eve of the performance.

Exercise 1. Remove muscle clamps as far as possible from the throat

Thinking about what we are going to say, we forget that before the speech, in the same way, we need to prepare our body. Simple vigorous movements are needed to relieve tension in the body.

Raise both hands up and sharply drop them down with an exhalation: “Ha!” Rotate your head, throw your shoulders as sharply as possible up, “to the ears”, then down. Shake your hands, shake your hands several times like a rag doll.

Say “rrrr” (this is called “champagne for the tongue”), shout “la-la-la”, stretch out “iiiiii”, so that the sound falls from the highest note to the lowest. Remember how we loved to do this as a child!

Exercise 2. Throw sound right on target

How do we speak? Hastily or somewhere to the side. But to say: “Alexey!” – it’s like throwing a ball into this Alexei’s hands. And how exactly you pronounce this word is very important to him.

Practice addressing each other by throwing a tennis ball. The exercise is useful for those who do not often look at the interlocutor: without making eye contact, you can miss.

Exercise 3. Speak so that you can be heard

This is an exercise for those who speak in a barely audible voice, “to themselves.” He is very popular in stage speech groups.

Imagine that we are standing on the bank of a river and we need to call a ferryman from the other side. Like in the movie “Volga-Volga”. The whole body is involved in “throwing” the sound: we take the sound in the right hand, swing it with all our might, from below, and “throw” it 100 meters forward – “Hey, steamer!” And now even further – a kilometer.

Why do it? To understand: we do not say “into space”. Our words have an addressee, we literally convey our words to him as a valuable package, making sure that he receives them intact.

Find “your” voice

Most women artificially raise their voice by squeezing the larynx. For some reason, we think that this is more correct. The voice becomes flat and unnatural.

Our goal is to find your real, natural, deep voice. Our voice is as unique as our fingerprints. And if it is lower than others, that is its beauty.

The voice has many characteristics. Each of them affects how we are heard and perceived.

Timbre is really about how people feel when they hear your voice. What is he for them? Pure, delicate, honey-viscous, velvety, warm, like a cup of chocolate…

A very useful exercise is to record your speech and listen to how it sounds from the outside. I can say right away that most likely you will not like it at first. But many actors do this, precisely in order to get used to, love its sound and go on stage, to people with this inner love for their voice.

This exercise must be repeated several times in order to objectively assess how it can be unpleasant for those who hear it. Indeed, many diction errors can be corrected with the help of special exercises.

Prosody (in other words, monotony) is, if you look deeper, the feeling of inner freedom that you convey to others in your every word. If it is not there, the voice sounds boring, on one note.

Few people know that the voice also has such a characteristic as register. You can “put” your voice inside the body, and then it will sound from the chest (they say this is “soulful voice”), from the stomach (uterine, insinuating sound, cooing), “from the head” (flying, flying voice). It has to do with which internal resonator our body uses.

The uterine voice is perceived by others as sexy, the flying sound is especially valuable for those who sing or perform in front of a large audience. The chest voice is loud without effort.

How do you know you’ve found “your” voice? Your whole body resonates with it: even your fingertips vibrate when you say the words. And this natural voice sounds only on a certain, “your” note: if you take it higher or lower, the vibration will disappear. Some mystic…

Exercise 1. Find “your” note

Place one palm on your chest, the other on the top of your head, say “mmmm” loudly through closed lips. Vary the pitch until you feel both your chest and head vibrate under your palm. This means that you have caught your natural sound, found a natural voice.

Exercise 2. Release vowel sounds

This exercise is especially useful for those whose voices are muffled through the nose. The reason is that your tongue is tense. Suppressed words, repressed emotions, unshed resentments – all this leads to clamping of the larynx.

Our goal is to “lay” the tongue the way a doctor puts it when he checks his throat. Independently, by an effort of will, this is not obtained immediately. But there is a simple exercise – try to yawn with your mouth closed, clenching your jaw. You will feel how the tongue itself goes down, giving free rein to a wide stream of air. Remember this feeling. Any vowel sound, even “I”, must be pronounced with such a wide opening of the larynx.

Exercise 3. Make clear consonants

But with consonants, the opposite is true. We are not heard for the most part due to the fact that we lubricate them, “swallow”, do not pronounce clearly, like Hermione Granger from Harry Potter.

This creates a feeling of casualness, as if we ourselves do not value and do not consider important what we are about to say. To make it easier to speak, imagine this metaphor: vowels are like a river, consonants are like banks. The river flows smoothly and freely when the bank is not eroded.

Try this exercise: say any tongue twister, but without vowels (for example, “Dust flies across the field from the clatter of hooves”). It is quite possible – moreover, you will even be understood.

Write a whole “story” of tongue twisters on a sheet and read it … holding a cork between your teeth. It will prevent you from pronouncing consonants – make more effort! Theater students even thread a thread through the cork to wear it around their neck and train in their spare time.

Yes, speech apparatus training is as hard as training in sports. The theatrical principle is this: to make the complex familiar, the familiar easy, the easy pleasure.

Exercise 4. Diction is more important than you think

A very simple task: say “King is an eagle” three times in a row. Most likely, you will not go astray. But you can talk about the clarity of diction when you do not stray by saying this phrase 30 times without stopping.

Why do it? When you own your speech, it already gives weight to everything that you say. And this means that you respect both yourself and your interlocutor, and what you are talking about with him.

What if the first words are hard to come by? Psychophysics suggests that just as the mind is related to the body, so is the body to the mind. Try a simple exercise: quickly rubbing your hands and kneading each finger, say whatever you like – without thinking, without pauses. It’s not easy at first, but each time it gets easier. And then, before speaking, one such movement will be enough – and the speech will flow by itself!

Acquaintance with your own voice, its capabilities is not a quick process, but by regularly performing these simple exercises, you will definitely see the result.

And finally, one more old theatrical advice to those who are shy and who are afraid to speak in front of an audience. Are they looking at you? It is necessary to catch this ball and throw it into the hall, take it again and throw it – and so shake the audience.