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Table of Contents:

• ** The Purpose of a Warm-Up **
• ** Relaxation **
• ** Vocal Warm-Up **
• ** Physical Warm-Up **
• ** Focusing the Mind **
• ** Communicating With Others **
• ** Exit **

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** The Purpose of a Warm-up **

1. To relax and relieve any Tension.
2. To prepare the voice for speaking.
3. To prepare the body for moving.
4. To get creativity flowing.
5. To focus your mind on the task.
6. To communicate with others.

** Relaxation **

Most people experience mental and physical tension and have come to accept this tension as a part of their natural condition. As people age, tension accumulates and we forget how it is to feel relaxed. Tension produces undue fatigue, breaks down concentration ability, and makes it difficult to maintain a patient and calm exterior.

Practicing relaxation, preferably at the same time every day, should be part of your Warm-up routine.

Relaxation Exercise

1. Lie down on your back with your arms lying loosely at your sides. Do a quick scan of your body and adjust any areas of discomfort. As you proceed with the exercise you may find your thoughts wandering. This is ok, just bring your thoughts back to the task and resume concentration.
2. Lie still and begin to concentrate on your feet. Try to feel the muscles in your feet release and relax. It may help to tighten them up and let go all at once. Imagine that they feel heavy, like lead weights.
3. Then concentrate on your calves. Tighten and release. Imagine their heaviness.
4. Continue this process on each major muscle group, moving up the body. Thighs, stomach, chest, arms, hands, shoulders, neck, and face. Each part relaxes completely and feels heavy. Imagine yourself sinking into the floor.
5. Imagine a bright light around your body. Think of a color that energizes you, like white or yellow. Imagine that this is the energy in your body, filling every fiber of your being and it gets brighter and stronger as you concentrate on it.
6. Start to move a little bit, gently roll your head from side to side, flex your fingers, wiggle your toes. When you feel ready, sit up slowly, get onto your feet, and slowly roll your spine up to a full standing position.
7. As you continue with your activities, try to remember this feeling of relaxation. There should only be as much tension as is necessary to do the job at hand. If you feel tension creeping in, stop your activity and re-establish your relaxation with some deep breathing exercises.

Deep Breathing Exercise

1. Take a deep breath. Concentrate on feeling the expansion in the front of the body. Continue to breath in and out slowly, focusing on the smoothness of the action and the air filling the body cavities. Feel your muscles release their tension as you breath.
2. Start to focus on the breath as it fills your sides. Feel your body expanding on the left and the right.
3. Start to focus on the breath as it fills your back. If you have difficulty feeling the breath expanding through your back, bend down on your haunches, drawing your chest against your knees. In this position, you should be able to experience this sensation quite easily.
4. Begin to imagine a slow count as you breath. Keep the inhalation and exhalation smooth as you count.
5. Try to extend the length of your count. Inhale on a slow count from 1 to 5. Exhale on a slow count from 1 to 5. Increase the count gradually until you can inhale and exhale on a slow count from 1 to 10. You may not accomplish this the first time you do this exercise. Be patient and practice frequently.

Your breathing control is very important when you're warming up and controlling the voice.

** Vocal Warm-Up **

A Vocal warm-up prepares the voice for speaking. You need to warm up the vocal chords just as you would warm up any other muscle in your body. They need to be ready for long duration of use and without proper vocal preparation, you can damage the chords.

Vocal Exercises

1. • Start with some deep breathing.
   • Turn the breath into a sigh, expelling the air with a light sound. Keep the sound soft and relaxed. Repeat as necessary.
   • Turn the sigh into a hum by closing the lips. Repeat as necessary.

2. • Take a deep breath and expel the air with a "sh" sound on an imaginary count from 1 to 5. Repeat as necessary.
   • Repeat the exercise using a "soft z" sound

3. • Open your mouth as wide as you can and then scrunch it up as small as you can. Repeat as necessary.
   • Keeping your lips loosely together, blow air through them so they flap together (I call this 'Horse Lips').
   • Stick out your tongue and roll it around. Reach up to your nose (or as close as you can), reach down to your chin, reach out to your left ear, reach out to your right ear.

4. • Do a few tongue twisters. Focus on pronunciation and enunciation:
   1. A big blue badly bleeding blister.
   2. Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
   3. A shifty snake selling snake skin slippers.
   4. The gum glue grew glum.
   5. Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb. Now if Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb, see that thou, in sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust not three thousand thistles through the thick of thy thumb. Success to the successful thistle sifter.
   6. What a to-do to die today at a minute or two to two
      A thing distinctly hard to say but harder still to do
      For they'll beat a tattoo at twenty to two with a
      rat-ta-ta, tat-ta-ta,tat-ta-ta, too
      And the dragon will come when he hears the drum
      At a minute or two to two today, at a minute or two to two.
   • Practice reading aloud any material you want.

** Physical Warm-Up **

If you've ever taken an exercise class you probably know how to warm up your body. The general idea is to get the muscles moving and the blood flowing but not to do so much that you're exhausted by the end of it. Here's a short list of some of the things I like to do:

1. Basic stretches. Stretch out all major muscle groups.
2. Jumping jacks or some other cardiovascular exercise.
3. Rotate arms, rotate wrists, rotate ankles, rotate shoulders.
4. Smack myself all over (it gets the blood moving in the skin).
5. Shake out (go nuts).

If there's a group of you, a physical game is a great way to warm up. Something like "TV Tag" (if you get tagged, you have to quickly say the name of a TV show or you're it) or a game called "This is my Nose" (where two players face each other. One points at their ear and shouts, "This is my nose!". The other player then points at their nose and shouts, "This is my foot!". The play continues as fast as possible until one of them makes a mistake, then another player can take their place). See the Reading List for more information.

** Focusing the Mind **

All the aforementioned exercises focus the mind and prepare you for your task. Here are a few other ideas to get your mind centered and your creativity flowing:

• Read through your script (you can never do this enough).
• Go over your notes from last rehearsal.
• Go over your blocking notes.
• Break down your script (see Script).
• Memorize lines.
• Review character motivation, obstacles, etc (see Character)

I recommend doing these mind centering tasks by yourself. Involving the other actors can become a big socialization party and your focus will just be scattered.

** Communicating With Others **

Focusing the group energy is the last step of the warm up. Most Directors have their own method of focusing the group energy but if they don't, here are a few suggestions:

• The Name Game - if your group is newly formed, The Name Game is a great way to get everyone working together right away. Everyone sits in a circle. One person starts the game by saying their name (first only, or both first and last if it's a small group). The next person in the circle says the first persons name and then their own. The next person in the circle says the first persons name, the second persons name and then their own. And so on down the line.
• Group Cheer - everyone stands in a tight huddle with their hands piled in the middle. Then just like a football cheer, you all shout, "hey, hey, hey, etc" until it's one great cacophonous noise.
• Group Pulse - everyone stands in a tight huddle with their arms around each other and bent over as low as they can go. They start to hum quietly. Increase the pitch and intensity of the hum while you all gradually stand erect. Eventually the sound becomes a great, open-mouthed roar.
• Group Choral Singing - sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in a round. If your group knows other simple songs, you can try those too.

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There are a wide variety of warm-up and centering techniques. Eventually, you'll pick and choose the exercises that work best for you.

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