Vocal skills in 37

What's your role as Voice & Text Coach? What is your goal when working with actors?

My role as a Voice & Text Coach varies greatly with each project. The demands change with each unique combination of text, artists and directorial vision. Ultimately, I’m an advocate for the spoken voice and the text, helping performers unite (and ignite) these fundamental ingredients in order to reveal the full potential of both. The goal, always, is to equip a performer with the technical skills that serve their unique imaginative connection and vocal release. How we achieve that involves a robust selection of physical and vocal exercises, unpeeling the layers of the text and creative problem-solving. The priorities are supporting sustainable vocal choices, serving the text and a profound commitment to the act of standing in front of an audience and telling the truth.

Ngali Shaw and Ben O'Toole. Photo: Pia Johnson

Can you give us an example of a vocal exercise you've done with the cast during rehearsal?

Oh, go on then: Get two chairs, spaced about three meters apart, facing each other. With your text in hand, sitting on one chair, launch yourself up to standing and moving forward, towards the empty chair while speaking a line. Your goal is to fuel the first word with the energy of movement. Next, continue to walk and speak the line towards the other chair, sitting heavily so that the last word of the line is bounced up and out as your glutes hit the chair. A few inches of freefall between you and the chair is all that’s required to get the benefits. You’ll find the free physical energy created from launching and landing helps to enhance the voice’s resonance and energy, allowing you to release your intention/line without strain.

Our vocal sessions in 37 were full of stuff like this, the more we trained the voice like a real AFL team trains their skills, the better the results were. The focus was physical engagement, intensely activating breath and finding the energised resonance required to reach a teammate on the other side of the field. The voice needed to be extremely robust and heightened while retaining clarity of intention and being safely repeatable, night after night.

How does your work help actors manipulate rhythm in their performance?

Think of the most engaging speaker you’ve ever heard. A speaker who instantly draws you in and keeps you there, captivating you completely, whether they’re telling an old joke or sharing the secrets of the Universe. I would be so bold to claim that rhythm and rhythmic variety in that speaker’s voice is a big part of why their words resonate. Everything is rhythm in the human body: our heartbeat, the cycle of breathing air in and out of our lungs – it’s why a crowd of people at a concert, clapping along, easily fall into time with each other. Exploring the musical aspects of the spoken voice (rhythm, melody, colour etc.) allows our breath, emotions and sound to be moved by the text, and they, in turn, move us.

The season 2024 cast of 37. Photo: Pia Johnson

How does your work help actors manipulate contrast in their performance?

The more choices you have access to, the more you can offer. The deeper your craft, the more effectively you can be directed.  A performance with contrast is, to me, nothing more than a truthful representation of a human being – in all their contradictions and absurdity. In our real lives we never feel the exact same way for long, and even in the context of, say, an argument, our voices and feelings morph and evolve moment to moment as the thing unfolds. By exploring the nooks and crannies of the text and our voice, by giving ourselves permission to be as complex and contradictory in our choices onstage as we are in our lives, we can arrive at a performance that springs from within and resonates deeply without. Self editing, the need to eradicate anything that can’t be easily categorised, wanting to demonstrate how clever or diligent we are – these are all examples of standing in our own way. Children in a playground don’t suffer from these blockages in their play and unleash an enormous amount of vocal colour and variety as a result. In short: free yourself of vocal habits, grow your artistic potential.