Pamela Hall writes:
"If the title of
the workshop, Voice of Violence, hadn’t attracted me already, the
mention of pregnant seals, vicious velars and fur balls, not to
mention the promise of screaming and shouting, ensured that my
attention was riveted throughout!
Lise Olson describes
'violent voice' as anything that is not regular conversational voice
use; so crying/laughing, shouting and screaming all come under the
heading of extreme, and therefore potentially abusive, voice
patterns. With a long history as an actor, director, stage-combatant
and voice tutor, Lise is ideally placed to conduct this workshop.
The 20 participants came from a range of areas: singers and singing
teachers from both the classical and pop repertoires, voice
teachers, and actors.
Lise was quick to
insert the sense of energy, practicality and fun that united this
group and dominated the day. She stressed the two main keys for safe
voice use as being: 1 – warm up and warm down, and 2 – "hydrate,
hydrate, hydrate". For stressful voice use "you need nice juicy
vocal folds". And certainly, most of us got through 2-3 litres of
water during the day alone, not to mention whatever we had been
advised to consume the day before in preparation, and the day after.
All vocal work needs
to be physically linked in order to provide support – breath and
muscular – to relieve vocal fold stress. Lise introduced a variety
of warm-ups to centre and ground, energise and connect, then focus
and articulate our voices and our physicality. The 'rubber chicken'
loosened our muscles, a stretch called Gathering the Sky centred and
regulated our breathing, reciting "twinkle twinkle little star"
while balanced on alternate buttocks released the voice, and the 'consonant shuffle' focused on effective articulation. Lise uses a
smorgasbord of vocal exercises, some traditionally voice based and
some Estill based, combined with her more picturesque re-workings of
familiar warm ups, to awaken our voices and our creative energies.
Laughing and crying
are physically and emotionally very closely related. We tried belly
laughs, quacking and twang as ways into laughing: We then looked at
the 'consonant keys' to crying, especially the nasal use of
consonants which sound when we cry. As the body can key in
kinaesthetically to the cry cue, it is possible, even when working
technically, that the effort can become emotional, and there must be
space for people to allow this to happen. However as this was
technical work, we were soon able to produce the most convincing
laughs and heart wrenching sobs one moment and be perfectly
controlled the next. We were then given the opportunity to work this
into text. Here Lise identified the use of 'scoring the text' ie.
deciding where the laughter or moans or sobs will occur.
The afternoon
brought the shouting and screaming.
Lise emphasised the
need for retraction of the false vocal folds to reduce constriction,
and the importance of physical engagement or anchoring – essential
for shouting. We discussed how various artists anchor in performance
(Pavarotti clutching his silk hanky) and tried pushing walls,
engaging our lats with the 'Peter Pan' gesture, lifting chairs and
balancing on our buttocks, to ensure the framework was there to
enable our voice to be supported and released as we shouted. We
learned the importance of anchoring before you shout, of
always ensuring that you have enough breath to support the shout and
choosing a pitch that works for your own voice. Once again, we
applied to work to text, looking at 'scoring' the shouts –
particularly useful in a stage fight.
Finally we got to the
screaming! Lise explained that she kept this till last as it is so
tiring and should only be done for short periods of time. "The
easiest way to scream is to sing", she said and accordingly we
warmed up with moans, groans and howling, werewolf style. We then
looked at pitch glides which shape the scream and finally the 'vicious velars' or
'fur balls' which provide the abrasive quality.
Anchoring like crazy, we let go, producing a number of group screams
which must have curdled the blood of any passers-by.
As we warmed down
doing gentle sirens and drinking yet more water we reflected on how
much energy we used, how free our voices felt and how much fun it
all was. As Lise said "a scene is more spontaneous when the
technique is solid" and this day certainly provided an insight into
solid technique that would allow any dramatic performance to fly."
