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've been keeping private journals on my performing arts studies, professional work and teaching off and on for thirty years. For no apparent reason, 1993 was a banner year for new thoughts about the breath—a productive time when what I had been taught over the many years and what I had been teaching over the many years came together and became more than the sum of their parts. I am still excited by the notes I wrote then. And although the emphasis in some of my thinking on this subject has shifted since then, I still see in these journal notes much of who I am today in my breath re-education work with speakers and singers (and I imagine that my students will see me in them, too!). One thing that's the same Then and Now: my musings on the breath have always been inseparable from my musings on the voice, the body and on acting:
BREATH. I am working with an idea of "registers" of breath: a) the extreme inhale, b) the mid-range inhale (usually used for talking), and c) the extreme exhale/end-of the breath. We need to learn to use the extreme exhale just as we learn to use the extremes of pitch. Ultimately, when the breath is "co-ordinated," it means that we have co-ordinated this in-out/high-low [exhale/pitch] relationship. A thought: the extreme exhale is also important because it is dramatic—giving out on the breath all that you have inside you—having no reserves of breath communicates as no reserves of emotion—no "holding back."
We have misconceptions about breath. We think that we will have more breath by continually inhaling. But this kind of inhaling—before the breath is fully expelled—makes the involuntary action of breathing into a voluntary action. That is, the body can't do what it's willing to do on its own and we then have to "will" the breath consciously. Related image: we may think that standing with feet apart (at the width of our hips) makes us steadier. In fact, this position works against the natural skeleton so that it's tiring, asking muscles in our bodies to do things, support things they're not meant to support. We are most steady, flexible and energized with feet aligned under the pelvic structure. We have misconceptions: standing in alignment, we may imagine that our base is so small that we will tip over—might even be able to tip over to prove it!—and this is like the breath: we associate the end-of-the-breath with "running out of breath"—an "unsteadiness," while in fact this is where our vocal strength comes from, since it allows the involuntary inhalation to occur.
More on alignment: standing in alignment is dramatic, because I see that you can move in any direction from this position—I don't know which way you will go, you could go anywhere! With the feet at hip-width, I know there will be swaying, a shifting-of-weight before you can move, so if I'm not seeing that then I know you won't be moving any time soon, or fluidly. In that position, the energy is not flowing in the shortest path through hips to legs to feet to ground.
BREATH. We are not stealing breath from the air and reluctantly giving it back. There is no "me against it." The air in the room is not a reluctant benefactor.
Acting: Acting, too, means voluntarily creating involuntary actions. (This is breathing!) PARADOX. I elect to create those impulses which my character follows involuntarily. Our artistry is then measured by 1. how deep the impulses are which we choose to re-create and 2. how imaginatively we re-create them. Other factors: precision, size, empathy, complexity, recognizability.
Acting means feeling impulses which are not your own.
Personal/Universal: knowing yourself (your personal experience of humanity) and dramatic literature (the conventions for expressing humanity throughout history).
Acting means synthesizing those Conventions from before with my Personal Illumination of now; synthesizing what history knows with what I know.
BREATH. We want to use the breath 1. efficiently, and 2. expressively. #1 means: quantity. #2 means: quality. With #1: stamina. With #2: generosity.
To this end, we need to watch the natural breathing process in an artificial setting. Like scientists isolating a cell, then trying to capture its natural process under a microscope.
We do this because breathing is a cycle—we want to know how to work with that cycle, to use it to our best "efficient/expressive" advantage. A bit like learning to jump rope—the rope comes around, goes around; with practice, my reflexes learn how to enter into that cycle without stepping on the rope.
Note: "inhale" and "exhale," as terms, don't seem to promote expressive use of the breath. Maybe: "take a breath"—or "find a breath" and "use a breath." I like "use"—making the breath "useful" or "purposeful."
The action of the breath: breathing is movement. Movement can only come from tension (in the good sense—in the sense of a dynamic). We create tension between the air pressure inside and outside the lungs. Putting pressure inside the lungs means "taking a breath"—putting pressure outside means "using the breath."
When we've used a breath, it creates a natural vacuum in the lungs, and the body knows to re-fill itself. If we never use the breath (hold or keep the breath at extreme inhale or mid-range inhale), the body can't proceed through its cycle and we have to voluntarily inhale instead (like gasping). This near-holding of the breath literally makes us tense—we have tension in the lungs, waiting for release.
BREATH. The body is the voice's "living environment." Breath lives in the environment of the interior space of the body. Like people, the breath expresses its experience at home.
Equalizing the breath in the body. Not allowing it to remain "pooled" "settled" "gathered" in some parts and not others.
Acting. Acting makes emotions useful. Puts them to some purpose.
From Troyat's biography of Chekhov (CHEKHOV, p. 167)—quoting a letter by him:
"…[…] writers who intoxicate us have one highly important trait in common: they are moving towards something definite and beckon you to follow, and you feel with your entire being, not only with your mind, that they have a certain goal, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, which had a motive for coming and stirring Hamlet's imagination. [Chekhov compares "immediate goals"—i.e. "special interests" such as abolition of X—to "remote goals"—such as God, afterlife, happiness of mankind.] …Each line is saturated with the consciousness of its goal, you feel life as it should be in addition to life as it is, and you are captivated by it…If you want nothing, hope for nothing, and fear nothing, you cannot be an artist."
Perhaps this attraction to or sense of "purpose" is why Chekhov found Stanislavski with his "motivation." Or: Stanislavski read "purpose" in the writing and developed his "motivation" for the acting of it.
BREATH. Imagine a raft on water: bouncy, buoyant, moving without doing anything. Raft on sand: we drag it, muscularly—bumpy, scraping. The breath is like water—we need a RIVER OF BREATH for the voice to float on. Otherwise, we're dragging, scraping breath through the body.
BREATH/Voice. Three considerations: 1. the quality of the breath inside the body (expansion) 2. mechanics of diction (lips, teeth, tongue vs. throat) and 3. the "bridge" of the breath between your mouth and the listener's ear.
I.e. it's not enough to produce a voice—it must travel to another's ear. Otherwise, it's as if there were two islands with no bridge between them—or a letter without a stamp.
It is a popular misconception that we speak with the voice. In fact, we speak with the breath.
Image created with a student, MC: Unicorn breathing. Breathing into the horn.
Language/Body. In societies in which the body is held very still and precisely, the impulses to fling, wiggle, to be free physically all take place in the voice. The more "held" the body, the more we rely on the voice to express us physically. As the codes of physical carriage relax—World War I—those impulses can move into the body and so the voice flattens out, becomes as little expressive as the body was formerly. The late 20th century impulse to, say, disco dance—to feel rhythm, to fling the body and sweat—was previously channeled into the voice, the recitation of poetry. Poetry was the place to get wild, to feel freely. The elaborate greeting, for example—flowery, verbose—was our version of squealing and throwing our arms around someone, air-kissing, etc. One used the voice to make contact with others—not the body.
BREATH. Studying breathing is like going to a teacher to learn how to blink. As soon as you focus on the components of this involuntary action—raising of the eyelid, dryness on the surface of the eyeball, impulse to lower eyelid—you begin to overdo: squint, or close tightly. When breathing (or blinking) is healthy, it goes back to taking care of itself.
Focus point. Unless you have a focus point outside of yourself, your own eardrums are your audience. If your audience is inside your head, you will feed your breath there, creating a Circle of Breath from your mouth to your ears, never realizing the breath in space.
BREATH. "Breathing forward" is like a game of jump rope. How can you join the game if you pull back when your time comes?
(One of Dr. Renaud's voice excercises will be anthologized in ed. Janet Rodger's "Voice and Speech Exercise Book," soon to be published by Applause Books, New York.
Lissa Tyler Renaud is an award-winning actress,
a PhD scholar, and the Program Director of The
Actors' Training Project
© 2000 Lissa Tyler Renaud ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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