The Basic Actor’s Training Program: FREEING

An actor’s work in freeing is designed to limber, align, and strengthen an actor’s body in an integrated approach that serves the clear and theatrical expression of the inner impulse.

A natural extension of the centering, sensing, and focusing activities is the integrated work with both the internal and external physical and vocal energies.

This release work forms the framework for the freeing process, which is designed to liberate the actor’s conscious and subconscious physical and vocal response while simultaneously strengthening the voice, body, and imagination.

The primary impulse for releasing the body and voice is breath. The process of voicing is, in fact, movement.

Communication between two people begins with an impulse—a need to express the self—that results in a complex series of movements that ultimately result in phonation and the formation of thoughts and feelings into words and sentences.

The process of improving the functioning of the voice must be tackled indirectly. This indirect approach involves the removal of habitual and unnecessary tensions that inhibit the effective functioning of the voice- speech mechanism.

THE VOCALIZATION PROCESS

STEP 1: The brain registers the impulse for sound. Inhalation and exhalation assume a secondary function.

STEP 2: The jaw drops slightly with respect to the amount of breath needed to communicate the message of the speaker.

STEP 3: Breath is taken in. The vocal cords spread apart to allow the breath to travel through the trachea or windpipe, into the bronchial tubes and reach the lungs.

STEP 4: When the air reaches the base of the windpipe, the diaphragm is activated. The diaphragm is a dome- shaped structure that separates the chest and abdominal cavities

STEP 5: The size of the chest cavity enlarges, creating a partial vacuum. The inhaled air fills this vacuum and expands the lung sacs.

STEP 6: The inhalation moves the diaphragm downward, flattening the abdominal muscles and the sides and back of the lower torso. There is an expansion outward, creating the appearance of an inflated abdomen.

STEP 7: As the breath is released, the diaphragm moves upward and its dome shape is transformed into a cone shape, reversing the process of inhalation.

STEP 8: Air departs from the lungs and passes through the larynx, where sounds are produced. The larynx houses two membranes called the vocal folds or vocal cords. As exhaled breath passes through the vocal folds, they vibrate and produce sound waves. The basic pitch is determined by how fast the folds vibrate.

STEP 9: Resonators, hollow spaces in the chest, neck and head, serve as soundboards that reinforce, modify and enrich sounds. The four primary human resonators are the pharynx (throat), the oral cavity (mouth), the nasal cavity (nose) and the chest.

STEP 10: Finally, the articulators (lips, teeth, gums, tongue, soft palate, hard palate, throat) are set in motion, cutting up the sounds into intelligent speech.

Both voice and movement are better regulated as subconscious functions. To this end, we seek to liberate the actor’s body and voice through indirect and improvisatory methods.

An actor’s stiff, held, or underdeveloped body, voice or imagination lacks the dexterity and freedom needed to adequately express the essence of the impulse.

Freeing work serves to meet the larger physical and vocal requirements of large emotional expression and requires a thorough understanding of the centering process, sensory perception, and the importance of focus.

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