VOCAL WARM-UPS FOR STORYTELLERS

Some personal thoughts by Richard and Judy Young
(This is not legally-binding medical advice….get real!)

Protecting the voice is a prime objective of the storyteller. On Hallowe’en (two weeks ago), we told stories to two elementary schools in Springfield, Missouri, telling to every child in each school in many grade-level sessions. We peformed for over 1,000 students in six hours (since we were telling at separate grade levels, in separate locations, Judy at pK-3 and Richard at 4 and 5, it was actually twelve hours of work, six hours for each of us.) Here are some tips we use protrcting our voices in our performing life:

Start with vocal training. Judy studied the Lessac Vocal Method at The Dallas Theatre Centre and Trinity University of San Antonio, Texas. Richard studied acting and voice at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. If you can’t find a good personal vocal coach, spend some time volunteering in a choir and pick up pointers from members and the director. Or, look for voice classes at your area community college, college, or university…night classes, if you work days the way we do. Learn to care for your voice, not strain it with odd character voices, not ‘overtell’ by ‘overspeaking,’ etc.
Find your vocal (musical) range. With a vocal coach, choir director, or musically-talented friend and a piano, find the lowest and highest notes you can comfortable sing or sustain without straining. Then keep your storytelling voices within that range! Many cases of voice strain come from doing character voices outside your normal vocal range.
Work on your posture. You cannot speak effectively if you cannot breathe effectively. Stand tall with feet in a comfortable position, possibly one foot slightly in front of the other. Stand straight, shoulders back and chest up to leave room for maximum lung capacity.
Breathe efficiently. To maximize your effective breathing, you must breathe from the diaphragm not up high in the chest. To learn to breathe effectively try these silly exercises: (1.) Rubber Ducky – get a rubber ducky (or any small toy or unbreakable knick-knack.) Lie on the floor. Get comfortable, but lie flat. Put the ducky on your tummy (isn’t this fun? Uh...OK…maybe not, but it works.) As you deeply breathe, make the ducky rise and fall with your tummy. (You can probably hold your breath and do some belly-dancing sort of tummy bouncing and move the duck…that ain’t the point! Breathe so that the ducky rises and falls naturally from you breathing.) This means you are using your diaphragm to expand the capacity of your lungs, instead of just heaving your chest to get air in (which is inefficient.) (2.) Puffing Puppy – (OK…make up your own names if these are too silly) Get down on all fours (hands and knees.) Your arms are now so occupied holding your weight up that you cannot heave your chest to breathe. This causes you to use your diaphragm. Now, take slow deep breaths and let them out. Feel what your diaphragm is doing, and try to do that when standing up or sitting down to tell stories. (Or, if you tell only stories about puppies, just tell them from the floor. OK…maybe not.) Find another way to learn if you prefer…these are just cheap. (Unless you break the knick-knack.)
Relax. Tension anywhere in your body will be reflected in your voice, causing strain. This is the principle behind the (not scientifically-proven) “truth detector” that measures strain in the voice, that the National Enquirer loves so much. Relax the mind / brain / ‘nerves’ by “emptying the mental waste basket.” Most actors do this or something like it before going onstage. Take a moment to yourself. Let arms hang loose, slowly lower the head until it rests loosely on your chest. Bend slowly from the waist and let your upper body hang limply like an un-strung marionette. Shake your arms loosely to be sure that they hang limply. (Don’t fall forward!) Some actors I know shake their limp hands 10 times. Empty your mind, thought by thought. (Go to your “quiet place,” “center yourself,” think on your totem animal, whatever. If you fall asleep at this point, it means you’re not getting enough rest at home!) Stand back up refreshed, alert, mind clear, ready to tell. Some actors and tellers, once upright, go into a prayerful position for further calming or prayer. Any variation on this that works for you will work for your voice.
Cut down your stress at home. Well…first get plenty of rest, so you don’t pass out doing your relaxing exercise! Here’s the tough part! Organize your life, make lists, seek counseling, divorce the creep, make time for yourself, take up yoga, get more exercise, become a vegetarian, get a puppy (tell him puppy stories), redecorate your bedroom, swim in bubble bath, wear non-matching socks…do whatever you (reasonably and legally) can to reduce stress in your daily life. Obviously, stress in your daily life shows up in your voice. (Talk to a friend going through a divorce, death in the family, serious illness of a relative. Hoarse…weak…harsh-sounding…Can’t you hear the stress in their voice? OK…hug them and comfort them before moving on.)
Warming up. OK…here’s one topic vocal experts disagree on. One group says you should always warm up your voice before performing; the other group says that if you are in room temperature (68-72 degress Fahrenheit…and you didn’t just come in out of a blizzard) your voice doesn’t need warming up but your brain may find it useful to clear the mind and relax by warming up. Everyone we know who sings or tells for a living warms up. We do, too. There are a zillion things to choose from: the y-buzz (the voiced consonant at the beginning of ‘yell’), humming scales, saying brrrrrrr with your lips as you slowly ascend the musical scale of your range (amazingly, flapping your lips eliminates the ‘break’ between your natural voice and your falsetto, which you may be planning to use in high, comic voices), etc., etc. Richard was taught (as a male) to start at his highest notes and work down, humming; Judy prefers to do low range, mid-range, high-range last. Sometimes we sing excerpts from Karl Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ in unison; sometimes we hum in rival keys from opposite sides of the car on the way to a gig. Do whatever works well for you.
Facial strain on the voice. Trying to tell a story while smiling continuously will strain your voice because the muscle tension in the smile is a strain…any strain shows in the voice. Smile at appropriate times, between sentences, sparingly. Ditto for frowns, scowls, grimaces, etc. that you might choose to use in a story. Use intense facial gestures between sentences if at all possible, not during them.
Straining for a character voice. If you are doing a character voice that hurts to do, or strains your vocal cords (as proven by soreness after the performance), STOP IT! Find a different way to make the voice, use a posture or gesture for that character instaed of a painful voice, use a facial expression instead of a voice that hurts. If you like suffering for your art, and you love your character voice so much that you’re willing to risk your career to do it…at least do it as the last story in your performance.
Put the most tiring story last. There’s nothing worse than putting a ‘barn-burner’ in the middle and being exhausted for the last four stoiries. The story that drains your energy, brings tears (boo hoo) to your eyes, tears (rrrrip!) at your (and the audience’s) heartstrings the most…is best saved for last. If it’s a sad story, you might want to add a short, light joke-anecdote-tale to end on. But…if your ‘great story’ is sad and it ends with catharsis for the audience and they leap to their feet to applaude (or in Richard’s case, the fifth-graders gasp and sigh with relief that evil was defeated, no matter what the cost, and sort of slump to their desks, exhausted), then end your performance there and call it good.

There’s lots more we could say…we do a workshop on voice if you’re interested. Contact us via the Contact Us page.

Protect your voice. It’s your gift from God and your career, all at once.

THE FIELD TRIP THAT COMES TO YOU!

RICHARD AND JUDY YOUNG’S NEW
BUTTERFIELD TRAIL SHOWS

The school year 2008-2009 is the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Butterfield Trail, a semi-private road which carried mail that came through Saint Louis, Missouri, by train to the westernmost railhead (first in Tipton, then in Syracuse, Missouri,) and then went by stage coaches on a long ox-bow-shaped route through Missouri, Arkansas, Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), Texas, New Mexico Territory (which included the future state of Arizona) and finally to San Francisco, in the new, distant state of California. The mail took twenty-five days, which was much faster than the three months it took for mail to be carried by sailing ship through the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America.

Travelling as a passenger on the Butterfield Trail was an ordeal, and the lives of the settlers in the low-population zones the stage coaches passed through were very different from the lives of the “city folks” on the bucking, bouncing celerity wagons that were used in the least populated areas of the Trail.

Professional authors and storytellers Richard and Judy Young have a new ninety- minute program on the Butterfield Trail in general (“Mr. Butterfield’s Trail”), and another 55-minute show about the Butterfield Trail in Missouri (“Show Me the Butterfield Trail.”) The ‘Show-Me’ show [Missouri’s motto is “The Show-Me State”] premiered for Osher Life-Long Learning Institute (O.L.L.I.) programs in Hot Springs and Fayetteville, Arkansas. The ‘Mr.’ Program premiered in schools and libraries, and is available for home-school conferences. Historic costumes, antique items from 1858, visual images, storytelling and folk music make the show unforgetable.

The Young’s highly-successful show “Tales from the Trail of Lewis and Clark” is also still being performed and is available to come to you. It also is available in 55-minute and 90-minute versions.

To learn more, ask questions, inquire about available dates, or to book the show, call toll-free 1-877-838-2075 or e-mail “Butterfield” TinyDoolittle(at)Interlinc.Net.

CELEBRATION CITY CLOSES ITS GATES

In a surprize announcement on October 24, 2008, Joel Manby, President and C.E.O. of Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation in Atlanta informed all employees of Silver Dollar City, Missouri, (including Richard and Judy) that their “sister park” in Branson, Missouri, “Celebration City,” is now permanently closed and the valuable land upon which it sits will be used for a different future project by the owners of Silver Dollar City.

Celebration City was a fanciful recreation of the state and county fairs of bygone years...but without the livestock. Fun rides, a wooden rollercoaster, and fair-style food and shows were featured.

Manby said, “In the coming year, we are exploring new development concepts for the Celebration City site including an aquarium, other family attractions, plus destination retail and dining options.”

Silver Dollar City is completely unaffected by this change, and continues to entertain millions with “memories worth repeating.”

Looks like something new and better will replace the nostalgic “iron-ride” park at the western edge of Branson in the very near future!

Here’s the real deal on rumors you may have heard. No, no one is bankrupt. No, the property on which Celebration City sits has not been sold. No, there was no ulterior motive in the closing of the barely-profitable park; the land will become home to a new attraction probably in 2010.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL  STORYTELLING

A Commentary by Richard Alan Young

Photograph of Jon Provost and Richard Young

As you may know, Jon Provost, the Hollywood actor who played ‘Timmy’ on the hit TV series “Lassie,” from 1957 to 1964, has been doing a guest appearance at the Riverfront Playhouse at Silver Dollar City. He presented three shows a day, five days a week, from October 1 to October 25, 2008. He showed video clips of the TV show and talked about growing up on a Hollywood film set (all the episodes were on film, and shown over the CBS network in a Sunday evening time-slot. Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball invented the filmed ‘tele-play’ concept to replace live TV, and introduced it on “I Love Lucy.” Mr. Provost is a ‘natural’ actor (as opposed to a “method” actor, etc., although he did use emotional recall for his crying scenes, which were numerous on “Lassie”) and although he had a script for his presentation at Silver Dollar City, he used it more like ‘talking points’ and each show was slightly different. I observed his storytelling (anecdotal?) technique, and saw many of the strategies Judy and I use in our folklore storytelling. Reading the audience: Mr. Provost would have one audience that wanted to say “Awww,” nostalgicaly, and the next would want to laugh. He ‘read’ the audience’s reactions, and adjusted his tone accordingly. Refining his wording: If a certain wording did not get the desired response, he tried another way of saying the same thing with the next audience. When he got the best or most appropriate response to one wording, he continued to use that wording for the rest of his four-week engagement. Adding/Dropping lines: Mr. Provost has an almost uncanny ability to reach his elderly, nostalgic audiences. He is quick to add a line that receives a good response, using it in the next show. He is just as quick to drop a line if it doesn’t bring the desired reaction. “Move on”: Mr. Provost rarely misspoke, once uttering the Spoonerism “Hom and Tuck” when he meant “Tom and Huck,” referring to a “Lassie” scene involving a raft. But when he did misspeak, he “moved on,” unless it was a”vital” error,” he simply continued to talk. The attempts one makes to correct a misspeech often result in further tangling of the tongue. It is often wise to just “move on.” Giving permission: Mr. Provost’s larger audiences usually wanted to laugh. He would sometimes “give them permission” to laugh at some part of his presentation by letting a little laugh “escape” his lips as he told it. The laughter was instantly contagious. In short, it was a consumate pleasure and unexpected opportunity to meet the man whom we all watched as a boy, having those often sappy but always uplifting adventures with that incredible dog Lassie. Mr. Provost is an excellent actor and public speaker…why wouldn’t he be? He grew up on a TV sound stage!