The Storyteller’s Voice

Areas Covered

• Understand basic vocal anatomy and how voice and speech are produced
• Learn effective methods of voice production and projection
• Improve your articulation
• Connect intention, gesture and voice to produce more lively speech and develop character voices

Provisio

Voice work/training takes time to be imbibed through long practice. Within the duration of this short workshop, I will be raising the participants’ awareness of certain principles of voice work, rather than aiming to effect a permanent change in their habitual use of voice and speech. Nevertheless, the workshop should heighten the participants’ consciousness in such a way that they will be able to subsequently monitor how they use their voice and make some adjustments for more effective voice usage if necessary.

Pre-Workshop Preparation

For Participants

Please come:

•  With a story you have not worked with before and that contains the possibility for the use of at least 2 or 3 character voices.
• Dressed in loose, comfortable clothing so that you will not feel constricted while doing the various physical activities.

For Organisers

• Please make available a fair-sized room that can easily accommodate all the workshop participants and the facilitator (seated in a circular formation). Please make sure that any other tables and chairs are stored against the wall or outside the room so that the participants have space to move freely about the space when they do the various exercises.
• Please make sure that the room has been vacuumed thoroughly before the workshop. The participants will be doing deep breathing exercises; thus a dusty environment would not be conducive at all.
• Please provide a large whiteboard and pens as well as access to computer/computer projection to show PowerPoint slides.
• Please provide pens and paper for participants (if they require).
• Please make copies of handouts that will be emailed to prior to the workshop.

Feedback

Participants' Feedback

 

What aspects of this workshop beneffited you the most?

"The workshop was very engaging. Every aspect of it was a huge learning curve. When one thinks of voice, one only thinks of the articulators. These exercises completely changed my vision of voice. I love your no-nonsence approach!"

Kala Sundaram

"The body movements that lead to the creation of the voice. It broke a lot of inhibitions. Breaking perceptions & though the activity of the body. Then holding the voice that came through the action. It helped me understand that you can hold energy without acting the character. Love the way you go into character."

Nandini Nagpal

"Lose my self-consciousness. Using the body to find the voice."

Millie Tan

"Experimenting with body, voice, face. Use body to enhance voice. Get into character. Very helpful — to reflect & practise & improved as a storyteller."

Preeta

"Exercises. Range of possibilities."

Rohit Johri

"Learning to relax. Finding out that gestures/actions bring forth the emotions. Always a good & fun reminder."

Tan Joo Hymn

"The movements and exercises were very helpful. It was interesting to see how body movement can help create different voices and sounds."

Chitwan Mittal

"Physicality — exploring the body as a means to explore the character & its voice. And losing inhibition."

Dawn Lau

"The exercises involving free movements to experiment with character types. Thank you very much for taking out your valuable time for us!!"

Srividhya Venkatakrishnan

About the Facilitator

A Singaporean writer, editor, storyteller and theatre practitioner, Verena Tay has published a short story collection, Spectre: Stories from Dark to Light (2012), and three play collections, and edited various fiction anthologies, including the bestselling Balik Kampung series of short stories published by Math Paper Press. She possesses three Masters: English Literature (National University of Singapore, 1993); Voice Studies (Central School of Speech and Drama, London, 2005); and Creative Writing (City University of Hong Kong, 2015). Since 2005, she has been helping people to improve their communication skills and has taught voice, speech and presentation skills, storytelling and creative writing.