Muscle Memory Part 1

Last week I wept for an actor I know very well. I wept for her as she performed. I wept because a year previously she had had technique, power and connection. I wept because she had lost it. I wept because we had worked so hard together.

Let’s face it: a lot of voice work is about repetition.

Voice training..... we’re trying to unlock muscle memory, to increase muscularity, to encourage muscles to engage automatically to serve impulse, instead of cerebral will.

This takes time, patience and repetition.

How often do you hear me say “Nothing in voice ever happened fast”?

I’ve been shocked lately by the amount of actors I’ve had through my studio who have lost their technique because they don’t have me on their back for a weekly class....even after giving them an easier and less time consuming way to do things (see Beating Voice Guilt).

Laziness is laziness folks, let’s call it what it is.

Equally shocking are the amount of actors coming through who have had so long to prepare auditions and dare to assume that one voice lesson will provide their magic pill. I can give you some useful advice - you might retain 50% of this in your audition. You won’t be any better at your craft in the long term.

This vocation is labelled a ‘discipline’ for a reason.

You can sense something is wrong: the voice is not responding to situations as it used to.

You wouldn’t walk into a gym after a six month break and expect to leg-press your best ever weight. Voice is no different.

If you’re living under the pressures of everyday life, you can in fact, expect an unchecked voice to regress.

You can have oodles of talent and all the cerebral knowledge in the world, but unless the voice and movement technique is part of your fibre, it will let you down, it will not respond to impulse and it will strangle the truth that might otherwise flourish.

A knowledge of this work is simply not enough. I’ve given you the tools you need.

Please don’t make me weep.

(To be Continued.....)