Unit 23 - Developing voice for the actor

Tuesday 9^th January

At the end of the session today, I took the group through a cool down so that they were all relaxed after the hard work that we had done during the session.

Here is a video of me taking the group through the cool down:

To start with, I got the group to lie down on the floor. Once they were led on the floor, I asked them to relax the whole of their bodies. To help them do this, I talked through the different body parts working from the feet all the way up to the head. Once everyone was relaxed, I got them to carry out the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise breathing in for 4 counts, holding for 6 and breathing out for 12. Doing this exercise led down on the floor allows the weight of the person to be distributed evenly throughout their whole skeleton and not just through their feet. After we had gone through the breathing exercise a few times, I got the group to come up to a sitting position in their own time and then once they had been sitting there for a few seconds, I got them to stand up in their own time.

I think that leading this cool down went really well and I think it was the best time that I have done it. My lecturer also thought this when I spoke to her after I had finished the cool down. I managed to remember all of the notes that I had given myself and I had been given from my teacher which included using a gentle voice throughout, using tapping to count the beats in the breathing exercise instead of clapping as tapping is a much softer and calmer sound and using a clear voice (use of diction techniques) and instructions so that the group could follow easily. Something which I think that I could have done better is left a bit more time in between each of the instructions that I gave so that I made the cool down even more relaxing and slower.