FIRST PERFORMANCE NOTES

I believe our show went well as there were no blips or faults made, and we were all energetic and ready for our debut! I think being excited and believing we could put on a show had a massive positive influence on our show, and the audience’s reception of it. But there were some notes and improvements I was not aware of which we received in our feedback session.

It appeared not all of us were using our ‘stage voices’; amplification that comes from voice control, rib swing, and resonance, not from forcing air through the vocal chords. Not using stage voices places strain on our voices and exhausts our voice. In addition to this, it isn’t very nice to listen to, as it can sound scratchy and tense. By resonating it destroys the unattractive traits of only using your voice from your throat, and is a lot more comfortable to use. It also adds depth and richness to your voice that will reach the audience and involve and drag them in the story, rather than forcing themselves to follow the play.

Will also noticed a lot of us were devoicing at the end of our sentences and not relying on our support muscles to see us through the end of a sentence on one breath, but were straining our voices, again, or breathing at random moments in our sentences which made the dialogue quite incomprehensible. One way of eliminating this unfavourable quality is forgetting any doubts, fears, self-consciousness we may have, as if we use our voice instinctively it knows what to do, and how to achieve our goal; by thinking too much about getting it wrong or looking silly on stage gives us psychological anxieties and therefore adds strains and stresses on our minds and subsequently on our voice.