In musical theater, actors are required to maintain technical, emotional, and artistic skills across several different performing art fields including acting, singing and dancing. As a result, actors are faced with the challenge of having to improve t...
In musical theater, actors are required to maintain technical, emotional, and artistic skills across several different performing art fields including acting, singing and dancing. As a result, actors are faced with the challenge of having to improve their skills in various performing fields.
One of the most crucial elements in musicals is to deliver both emotion and acting during the delivery of a song. And actors who are not trained properly in vocal techniques, particularly face many challenges throughout rehearsals all the way to the actual stage performances. One sees this especially when an actor is making efforts to hit high notes of a song and is straining his vocal cords to do so, which forces him to focus more on singing rather than being in the character and the story.
In musicals, the point in which a character breaks into a song, is when both the story and their emotions reach a peak, the point of ‘heightened emotion’. And thus conveys the story and emotion through the ‘delivery’ of the song. So it is imperative that the actor/singer has a high level of technical vocal skills to interpret and perform the song.
Furthermore, many actors struggle in how to incorporate or mesh their acting skills with their singing skills. Even actors who are vocal majors face certain difficulty during singing because they have to maintain the intense emotional state of the character and still be in perfect control vocally.
It is very common in musical numbers to be singing and emoting the ‘high-note’ when the character’s emotion hits its peak. Sometimes this results in the ‘pitch-break’ or ‘vocal cord strain’ which may ruin the highlight moments for actors as well as for the audience. Actors who experience ‘pitch-break’ sometimes end up having continuous trauma of performing that song.
In this study, first I discuss the reasons and solutions about ‘vocal cord strain’ based on pathological analysis and professional characteristic analysis of musical actors work environment. Next I suggest how to release vocal straining for musical actors using a direct and efficient physical training method based on K. Linklater vocal techniques, and also Bel canto training method to build breath support, vocal cord control and resonance of paranasal sinus. Furthermore, I suggest the use of the ‘emotional heightened state’ in which the actor can generate naturally enough force to maintain his acting while singing musical numbers.
First step is finding how to create a natural vocal sound. The K. Linklater Method allows you to understand the mechanism of how your body generates natural voice and breathing. It also helps you to use the organs that is hard to see or hidden, such as the root of your tongue, soft palate and paranasal sinus.
Second step is expanding the sound. I suggest Bel canto singing techniques redeeming its repetitive and apprentice system by K. Linklater Method. This method helps you to understand the logic of Bel canto technique thus helping you to expand the range of your voice from singing to speaking onstage.
Lastly I suggest how to incorporate using your natural physical impulse generated by an ‘emotional heightened-state’ during the process of acting. Musical numbers occur onstage when the story shifts or characters lead into big emotions. As an actor, you may sometimes directly or indirectly experience the same emotions your character goes through. This creates changes in your body both physically and emotionally and it occurs as ‘impulse’ to actors. This ‘impulse’ enables complementary interaction of larynx organs in the actor. As a result, one is able to release unneeded tension in there vocal cords and support there singing vocally.
In this thesis, I have included two cases of using ‘impulse’ energy to release vocal cords strain. It also includes one year study of workshop with four students from the musical department of ‘S’ University, based on the training method suggested in this study.