1. Voice Why is the voice of the actor important?
You must be heard by everyone!
Lines contain crucial info about plot and characters
Audience will get angry/bored if they can’t hear
It conveys what kind of character your are playing
It conveys what your character thinks and feels about the events that are taking place

2. Breath Control Diaphragmatic Breathing
A breathing technique useful to actors that increases air capacity and improves breath control
Diaphragm: connective muscle and tissue between your abdominal and chest cavaties
Contracts when you inhale, causing your abdomen to expand
Expands when you exhale, causing your abdomen and rib cage to contract

3. Breath Control

4. Making and Shaping Sounds
Vowels: open, sustained sounds
Formed by RESONATORS: the hard and soft palates, throat and sinuses
Openness and flexibility of your resonators affects the RESONANCE of your voice: quality of your vocal tone
Consonants: stopped or shaped sounds
Formed by ARTICULATORS: jaw, lips, teeth, tongue, and soft palate
Use of your articulators affects your ARTICULATION: the clear and precise pronunciation of words

5. Resonators and Articulators

6. Projection
Project: (verb) to use your voice in such a way that it fills the performing space so that every member of the audience can hear and understand you
SHOUTING IS NOT PROJECTING!
Achieved by focusing your voice on a particular spot and speaking clearly with sustained control.

7. Expression
Use variety in your voice to express changing thoughts and emotions.
Variety in speech=INFLECTION
Inflection can be varied through changes in five elements of voice
Pitch: How low or high your voice is
Volume: How loud or soft your voice is
Tempo: how fast or slowly you speak
Phrasing: how you divide your speeches into smaller parts, adding pauses to create emphasis and a rhythmic pattern of sounds and silences
Quality: the individual sound of a particular voice, characterized as any of the following
shrill, nasal, raspy, breathy, booming, quivering, etc.

8. Diction Diction involves… The correct articulation of sounds
Proper formation and pronunciation of words
Careful enunciation of syllables
Clear and distinct speech
The musical rhythm of naturally spoken language