The Voice Class has just passed the half-way mark.  We’ve established the basic principles of good posture, self-awareness as against self-consciousness, the physics of sound and the relationship between breath and voice.  We’ve learned the mini-vocal warmup, and begun the process of expanding it into the vocal maintenance program.

A week ago, I introduced the students to my full vocal warmup, the one that was originally developed in Scotland by the members of the Golden Age Theatre ensemble. And we really were an ensemble, sharing ideas, energies, skills, experience to make theatre together.  The warm up began as a purely physical warmup, but I have developed it over the years to be a total, all-in-one program that serves as training as well as a device to bring into focus the body, voice, brain, emotions, imagination and anything else that contributes to the YOU-ness of you.

We fudged some of the more challenging physical aspects of the warmup last week, but last night it was the full whammy. Hard work, but also fun. The fun part kicks in when you actually know what you are doing – as with anything – and you can begin to play with the different elements while respecting the integrity of the structure.

So today, I’m just a little bit sore. But my heart is full.