When your professor asks you to curl up on the floor and wave your legs in the air, demonstrates crying on demand, and leads you in a group rendition of “The Wizard of Oz,” you might say you are not in Hillsdale anymore.
On the contrary, you are in Voice for the Stage with Professor Elizabeth Terrel.
“It doesn’t seem like a [typical] Hillsdale class,” said freshman Wes Wright. “But once you get into it, it’s really neat.”
Voice for the Stage is offered on rotation every two years and is typically taught by a guest professor. Elizabeth Terrel, this semester’s visiting lecturer in theatre, serves on the faculty at Western Michigan University where she is assistant professor of theatre and director of voice and movement.
Terrel said she teaches the Fitzmurice Voicework technique, the Roy Hart vocal technique, and her own method, Terrel Core Training. In this class, she focuses on production of the voice through relaxation and resonance, rather than on articulation of text.
Terrel tells her students they must use breath exercises to discover ways they can express emotion through the voice.
“Theatre is not just about ‘pretty,’” she said. “You have to use the whole range of human vocal expression, from pretty to ugly.”
Terrel coaches her students using an exercise she calls the Oz routine. She calls it “extended voice work” because it engages all the different resonators within the body.
First is the Cowardly Lion: the deep chest voice. Standing relaxed and low, weight slung between two feet as if looking for a fight, the students mumble, “Put ’em up! Put ’em up!”
Next comes the intermediate chest voice: “I am Oz, the great and powerful.”
Head voice appears in Dorothy’s frightened tones: “Run, Toto, run!”
Finally, the croak of the Wicked Witch of the West engages the nasal register: “I’ll get you, my pretty!”
After their trip to Oz, Terrel brings her students back to earth, reminding them that every sound they make is connected to deep, often non-verbal, emotion.
Since emotional expression begins with a relaxed body, Terrel’s students begin class with exercises known as “tremoring” or “destructuring.” This involves lying on a floor mat, flexing the body into various contortions such as “child’s pose” or “cobra,” and then letting the muscles shake in that position while vocalizing with sighs or groans.
The purpose is to create a physical foundation for using the voice.
“You are breaking down the habitual patterns of breath,” Terrel said. “This is about finding chaos and staying in it to work, which is what actors have to do to be effective. In giving voice to your tremor, you are allowing the voice and the vibration to come out.”
Terrel said performers must maintain their vocal presence while reenacting situations, such as arguments, in which people normally stop speaking or lose their voice due to tension and emotion.
Terrel said she has been fascinated with issues of breath since childhood, when her grandfather struggled with emphysema. She became interested in training others in use of the voice through her own studies as a vocalist.
Terrel began her college career studying opera, but switched to musical theatre. She found that, in addition to her classical training, she needed to learn new vocal techniques to be successful in musical theatre performance.
Homework for Voice for the Stage is always practical. Last week, Terrel asked students to go home, get into an argument, and observe how the rising tide of emotion affected each person’s breath and thus their voice.
Last week students began exploring their “cry voice.” Their next assignment is to visit a local store, ask in an authentically weepy tone, “Do you have an ATM machine?”—and see what response they get.
The class is composed of speech and theater majors, ranging from seniors to freshmen.
Freshman Wes Wright said one of his favorite exercises is the Oz routine.
“It’s really neat [to hear] the changes that simple vocal exercises can have on the tone of a whole room, without changing the pitch of anyone’s voice,” he said.
Wright said this training enables him to speak clearly in situations where speech is normally difficult.
“She often gives the example of [acting the role of] a hunchback; you are bent over, but you have to keep everything in line so you can still speak fully,” she said.
Junior Margaret Ball, a theater major who also studies classical voice, said there is a lot of overlap between singing and speaking on stage.
“You’re talking about the same thing, especially in regards to vocal health,” she said.
Ball said the exercises gave her new insights into her singing technique.
“It opens you up to explore new resonances. It’s great to go back to voice lessons and use this newfound freedom,” she said.
Ball said Terrel told the class the voice is the only thing about an actor that touches the audience.
“As a theatre major, what I work on first in a character is the voice, to make it different from my own,” Ball said. “Maybe we’re not there, but we’re with them through their voice, experiencing these emotions through their sound.”
sbarrett@hillsdale.edu
