Vocal Development for Restoration

The characteristics of my voice:

• My voice has a breathy quality to it, which proves that I need to have more control over my breath. I also have asthma which shortens my breath when I talk.
• I have good articulation and a good delivery on the lines.
• However, I sometimes mumble – which is called Enunciation.
• As well as having a breathy tone I sometimes go a little bit nasal.
• I put a range of emotions in my voice so it’s not pitch monotonous.

In what ways do these vocal qualities benefit or hinder you as a performer for Restoration?

Advantages:

• Good articulation and delivery makes it easy for the audience to understand what I’m saying, especially for restoration as the writing is pretty hard to understand in the first place.
• A good range of emotions in my voice makes the piece interesting to listen to and helps me with my character work, for Lady Plyant I especially need all the different emotions as she is a very expressive character.
• The breathy tone can come in handy to change the tone and volume of the piece, for example excitement. I used this to my advantage during the scene with Careless when I'm breathless with lust.
• Last time I talked about my diction and how I kept on missing out the letter t. But for Restoration I had very good diction as I had a very overly dramatic posh accent to help me maintain it.

Disadvantages:

• However, a disadvantage of having a breathy tone is that it seems that I’m always running out of breath and for my scenes in Restoration I'm moving a lot, I'm never usually sat down so I needed to make sure I was breathing regularly during each scene.
• The nasal quality also makes my voice go pretty high and squeaky, which could be annoying to listen to and not really Lady Plyant so I had to be extra careful not to go too high.

What vocal exercises might be suitable for building on your strengths for Restoration Performance?

• One of the strengths I have is articulation and the exercises I use are tongue twisters and rotating the tongue around my mouth, because I also am very overdramatic the exercise of chewing toffee is helpful as it really flexes and widens the mouth giving me the opportunity to speak more louder and easier without straining my jaw.
• Because I have a breathy tone to my voice I count my breath to lengthen the breath intake and outtake, giving me the opportunity to speak for longer without having to pause during a sentence, as Lady Plyant's sentences are long winded.
• Changing emotion is one of my strengths and I usually change my pitch and pace. The vocal exercise I use to strengthen that is humming, for example the waterfall one, going low to high or vice versa.