An Approach to Training the Singing Actor
Charles Gilbert, Associate Professor, Theater Arts
Head, Musical Theater Program
The University of the Arts, Philadelphia PA USA

Abstract

In many of the performing arts, routine practice of fundamentals of technique is an essential part of the development of artistry. The dancer practices at the barre, the instrumentalist plays scales and etudes, and the singer has vocalises and exercises which exert comparable technical demands. The musical theater performer, whose craft is multidisciplinary, must pursue technical mastery in the component skills of singing, music, dancing and acting. There is, however, an additional set of skills which are unique to singing-acting, an art which requires the integrated use of voice, body and soul to create performances which are articulate and expressive. This presentation focuses on identifying those skills which are specific and unique to singing-acting and present examples of "etudes" which have been developed to give student singer-actors the opportunity to practice those skills independent of their work on specific repertoire. It examines the crucial difference between practicing and rehearsing and demonstrate how these etudes for the singing actor facilitate the essential task of working on the singer as well as the song.

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Training young singing actors has been a central focus of my professional life for nearly twenty years. Working with hundreds of singer-actors has given me the opportunity to discern certain elements which seem to be fundamental to good singing acting and develop an approach to training which has enabled many of my students to successfully incorporate those elements in their performance. One of my earliest discoveries was that "singing-acting" was a craft with distinct technical demands not typically taught either by the singing teacher or the acting teacher. H. Wesley Balk's seminal work The Complete Singer-Actor (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2nd ed., 1985) first made me aware of this phenomenon and the shortcomings of what he calls "supermarket training":

The singer-actor can pick up just about any individual skill from the excellent offerings on the curricular shelves at our academies. But, like a shopper in the finest supermarket, a student purchasing ingredients for an operatic performance recipe will be at a loss without knowing how to put them all together. For that you need either an operatic cooking course or an operatic cookbook unless you have the intuitive skills of that rare creature, the instinctive singer-actor cook. (17)

Students training for the musical stage typically begin by studying its component skills (i.e., singing, acting, dance, musicianship and so on), but before they can successfully blend those ingredients, they need a comprehensive vision of the creative possibilities of their art form and a set of concepts and tools to guide them as they begin to combine their raw materials.

In school, aspiring singing actors shape their vision as young artists by studying examples of distinguished work and role models (both positive and negative), and measuring their own efforts and those of their fellow students against those models. Teachers serve as both resource and guide to students in this process, choosing the most useful examples to cultivate the students' emerging sensibility and, more importantly, helping them build a vocabulary and a framework of concepts which they can use to understand and evaluate those examples. It sounds simple enough: students need to be exposed to good work and understand what is good about it.

In the field of musical theater, however, this task is not as simple as it sounds. The musical theater is a complex, interdisciplinary art form whose unique character is the result of the juxtaposition of often disparate, even contradictory elements. Wesley Balk observes that "the music-theater aesthetic is firmly grounded in the blending of opposites" (Balk, 37), and has developed the notion at length in The Complete Singer-Actor and his two other books. The musical theater is poised at the precarious convergence of high art and commercial entertainment, embodying elements of both grandeur and intimacy and borrowing freely from a wide range of musical, theatrical and dance styles. This being the case, it is hardly surprising that the typical undergraduate finds it hard to articulate a clear vision of the musical theater.

Of all the contradictions inherent in the musical theater as an art form, perhaps the most profound is the dialectical relationship between form and formlessness as it relates to the telling of a story in drama and music. In the Poetics, Aristotle teaches us that drama is the imitation of an action, and in drama, we respond to that which is "life-like," that is, work which imitates reality in a manner sufficiently recognizable for us to respond to it with empathy. Real life, while full of passion and conflict, tends to be chaotic in nature, sometimes overwhelming, often tedious, always unfocused and lacking in point-of-view. Skillful dramaturgy can be used to give a theatrical work form at the macro-level, but realistic works for the stage are, as a rule, rather formless at the micro-level of words and events.

Music, on the other hand, depends on form for its very existence. The building blocks of music - rhythm, melody, motif and pattern, repetition and contrast - are formal by their very nature, and the lyricist, in creating words to be set to music, is similarly attentive to formal considerations of rhythm, rhyme and prosody. What is more, audiences seem to have as much of a craving for structural beauty and formal elegance as they do for the imitation of life in all its raging, chaotic emotional force.

It is in the phenomenon of song that we experience the contradictory convergence of drama and music most exquisitely. It is here, on a very intimate scale, that the rush and muddle of life's experiences and emotions must be channeled into the structures of melody, prosody, rhyme, rhythm and harmony. At the primary level, it is the writer and the composer who must successfully address these challenges, but eventually, the performer as interpretative artist must confront them as well, for it is the performer's task to bring the writers' creation to life in a way which is sensitive to their intentions.

All of this is relevant to the issue of the training of the singing actor, who must rise to meet this artistic challenge. A recent interview with Rinde Eckert, an American "performance artist" whose unique solo works draw upon his talents as composer, singer, actor and writer, contained this provocative reflection on his training:

As the youngest of four children born to two music teachers ... , [Rinde] Eckert practically grew up on the stage. ... Not surprisingly, when he went to college at the University of Iowa, his plan was to study theater. Midway through, however, he found himself annoyed by the lack of specificity in the training and switched to music, "because they had a technique they were actually teaching you," Mr. Eckert recalled. "They were asking concrete questions about mechanics and structure," he continued. "Most of the theater departments I knew were all over the place. They had no consistent philosophy. I thought, how is it possible for an intelligent person to arrange himself idiosyncratically in relation to this emotional chaos?" (Don Shewey, "Not Moby-Dick but Whale-ish," New York Times, June 11, 2000)

Eckert correctly notes a fundamental contrast between the "concrete" technical approach of the musician and the "idiosyncratic" approach of the actor, but in training for the hybrid art form of singing-acting, the singing actor needs to absorb elements of both approaches. Musicians are told that "practice makes perfect," but what should the singing actor practice, and how?

The worlds of acting, music and dance present several contrasting behavioral models for practicing. For the singer or instrumentalist, practicing means "going to the woodshed," long hours spent in isolation, working on scales, arpeggios and etudes which cultivate the "chops" needed to skillfully execute the technical demands of the repertoire. Even the jazz musician, whose performance is largely improvisatory, knows that one doesn't just "blow"; spontaneous creative expression requires rigorous preparation if it is to possess the qualities of true artistry. The training of the dancer (like that of the athlete, which is similar in many ways) may be less solitary than that of the musician but it is no less rigorous. Dancers work in groups because many of their training needs can be successfully addressed in a regimen of daily classes and workouts. Rigorous work on technical fundamentals at the barre or on the exercise machine gives dancers the strength, coordination, flexibility and awareness they need before moving to the floor to apply those skills in combinations and choreography.

In the world of the theater, methods of practicing are less clear-cut. In America, where a strong tradition of realistic theater has led to an emphasis on "life-like" performance, successful work can often be developed in rehearsal through a give-and-take with the director and fellow actors without an obvious need for technical work or "woodshedding" (other than the memorization of lines). This is not the case for all forms of theater, mind you; watching one of my colleagues, a distinguished fight director, choreograph a sword fight is a vivid reminder that there are aspects of theatrical performance where careful execution of technical details is literally a matter of life and death. But stage combat is the exception that proves the rule, since actors seem to find the technical discipline of combat quite unlike their typical working process.

In his book The Acting Kit, my former colleague, Richard Brown, defines the difference between practicing and rehearsing thus: "Practice is the focused development of particular skills required in the craft. Rehearsal is the use of those skills in a particular setting, such as when working on a scene. Obviously, rehearsal involves practicing to some extent, but, in some important areas, the focus on practice can get lost in the process of getting to the result needed." (Richard P. Brown, The Acting Kit, unpublished ms., 1986, 11) My own experiences with both student and professional actors at work bears out Brown's observations regarding their tendency to confuse "practicing" with "rehearsing" and to underestimate the value of the former.

Dancers, musicians and athletes practice, rehearse and "perform." Actors tend to rehearse and perform, even in the training situation, without enough time and energy given to focused practice of the elements of their craft. It's as though a tennis player tried to develop basic competence in serving by playing a lot of practice games (rehearsing) without the needed practice on the serve alone -- outside the context of a game. Maybe it's possible for a player to develop competence in that way, but most artists and athletes do not appear to believe it. Only actors behave as though they believed it. (Brown, 10)

It is unrealistic (though not uncommon) for the singing actor to believe that technique can be developed in rehearsal. Faced with the harsh realities of an enormously complex task to be accomplished within a limited schedule, the adroit singing actor may learn a lesson in survival, but is unlikely to experience growth in technical ability. For that reason, though the ability to function successfully in a rehearsal and performance environment is the ultimate test of the singing actor's skill, replicating that working process in the studio is of limited value as a pedagogical approach. Singing actors need tools which they can use independently in a wide variety of repertoire, enabling them to make a creative contribution to the collaborative effort of production which will complement the more externally-oriented approach of the director, choreographer and conductor. It is easy for the teacher or coach to provide the student with some cosmetic details to enhance a specific performance, but the student needs to cultivate an approach based on autonomy rather than dependency.

In my studio, I try to address the difference between practicing and rehearsing by talking about the importance of working on the singer as well as working on the song. The technical (vocal, musical, physical) demands of the "singing the song" (or, by the same logic, "doing the dance") are often so extensive that the performer who can successfully execute those tasks is understandably tempted to believe he has created a complete performance. But "singing the song" is just the beginning; a more extensive definition of the task of the singing actor is called for.

During the course of a performance, the singing actor is called upon to sing certain words in a predetermined pattern of pitches and rhythms with certain timbres and degrees of loudness, to speak certain words, and to execute certain movements, including both blocking and choreography, but none of these things is the creation of the singing actor himself, though all of them are essential to the success of the performance. What, then, is the nature of the unique creative contribution of the singing actor? My approach begins with this simple definition: the singing actor creates behavior. More specifically, the singing actor creates behavior which seems believable given the imaginary circumstances of the world of the play, behavior which creates a compelling illusion of a real person affected by real events, even though those events are often depicted using the stylized vocabulary of music and dance.

The behavior which a singing actor creates needs to have certain qualities, and I have identified four qualities which I believe are essential in effective singing-acting: variety, intensity, specificity and authenticity. I remember them in this order using the word "VISA" as a mnemonic device, though I do not necessarily address them in this order in the studio. Indeed, to list them thus is to present them in reverse order of importance.

Authenticity is a quality of primary importance in effective singing acting. Audiences recognize authenticity as the "ring of truth" in a performance. The notion of authenticity in musical theater is paradoxical, since there is no behavior in real life that resembles singing-acting. An except from Tadashi Suzuki's book The Way of Acting contains a key to that paradox:

The art of stage performance cannot be judged by how closely the actors can imitate or recreate ordinary, everyday life on the stage. An actor uses his words and gestures to try to convince his audience of something profoundly true. It is this attempt that should be judged.

Though the musical theater is an artificial and stylized art form, a quality of believability and the presence of a sense of personal truth on the part of the performer is essential to its success.

The concept of authenticity is fraught with the potential for confusion, particularly for beginning singing actors, who are often encouraged in acting classes to draw upon their own experiences in their search for a "sense of personal truth." They expect singing-acting to "feel natural," when in fact it is an artificial construct. A helpful analogy is the toddler, for whom walking is, at first, an unnatural act; the toddler will takes many falls before the ability to walk becomes habitual. With persistent practice, complex tasks which are mechanical and artificial become habitual and seem natural. Authenticity in singing-acting is achieved, not by subtracting any effort that seems "unnatural" from a performance, but by practicing the behaviors a singing actor uses to communicate until they become habitual and "transparent," allowing the personal truth of the actor to shine through.

Closely related to authenticity is specificity, the quality evident when a performer's behavioral choices serve to clearly delineate the world of the play, the character's relationship to that world and the other characters in it, and the moment-to-moment ebb and flow of events in that world. Achieving specificity requires thoughtful analysis and research and meticulous attention to detail in all aspects of a performance.

Intensity is the quality of heightened emotionality in a singing-actor's behavior. Many of the most memorable moments in the musical theater repertoire depict passionate characters reacting to significant events with strong emotion, and the best musical theater performances are characterized by a strong sense of passion. Music and song serve to intensity emotion on the musical stage, and the successful singing actor must be able to rise to those emotional heights without sacrificing believability or specificity.

Students and professionals alike tend to confuse intensity with tension. For instance, in the pursuit of a high level of vocal intensity, a singer may create a great deal of tension in the vocal mechanism. In fact, tension is the opposite of intensity, and I like to use the analogy of a car to explain the difference. Intensity is the force of the engine, tension is what you experience when you apply the brakes, the result of two forces in conflict. Many performers unconsciously associate the sensations of tension with the experience of intensity, but it is not only possible, it is highly desirable to achieve intensity without tension.

Variety refers to the performer's ability to change his behavioral choices in response to the changes that take place during the course of the dramatic event. Drama is by its very nature dynamic rather than static; it depicts characters propelled by forces of change to moments of crisis and, ultimately, climax. Effective stage behavior must have variety if it is to successfully project that dynamic quality. "Generalization," the term used to describe an actor's behavior when it lacks variety and specificity, is referred to by Stanislavski as the actor's greatest enemy.

The singing actor must know when to make a change in his behavior and when to sustain behavior without changing. Effective singing acting requires the ability to make strong choices and to sustain those choices for as long as needed until there is a reason to make a change. A mastery of choosing and changing gives the singing actor the ability to create form in his work. Choosing without changing results in static, one-dimensional behavior, but changing without choosing results in random, chaotic behavior which is equally unsatisfactory. The singing actor needs to practice both choosing and changing, and study the script, the score, the given circumstances and the behavior of his onstage partners for clues about when to sustain a choice and when to make a change.

We can identify three distinct ways in which the behavior of the singing actor is evident to audiences. Balk refers to these as the three "projective modes": voice, face and body. Think of these as three independent channels, each capable of conveying information to an audience in a manner which either complements or contradicts the other two. Each actor has a distinctive set of strengths and weakness in their "modal makeup" as a result of physical, psychological, temperamental and cultural differences, as well as differences in training and experience. A major goal of training for the musical stage is to give each singing actor access to an extensive vocabulary of vocal, facial and physical behaviors, and to be able to create powerful, expressive behavior in any mode without having it detract from behavior in the other modes.

We begin with vocal behaviors, which provide our primary experience of music and song. Bel canto (sometimes referred to as "legit") technique is an important component of the training for any singing actor, and audiences love to hear beautiful singing, but the singing actor must be prepared go beyond a beautiful, neutral sound. The voice must be capable of conveying a wide range of emotions, characterizations and styles through choices of breath, support, placement, resonance, timbre and diction. The singing actor should be able to conceive of spoken and sung sound as points on a continuous spectrum of vocal possibilities, and move easily between speech and song without a diminution of any of the four qualities (VISA) named above.

Facial behaviors constitute an area of some controversy in performance training. There is a considerable range of opinions concerning how much the face and eyes should be used before expressiveness devolves into "mugging." The idea that a singing actor should deliberately create facial behavior seems to contradict many acting teachers' notions of truthful, authentic behavior, which they believe can only originate as an impulse within the actor. Setting aside questions of degree and origin for future discussion, we can agree that movements of the face and eyes convey an enormous amount of information regarding the emotional and intellectual process of the singing character, and it is therefore imperative that the singing actor have access to a wide range of expressive behaviors in both the face and the eyes.

Body behavior includes both gesture as well as movement through space. As with the other projective modes, the actor's goal should be the development of an extensive vocabulary of behaviors, ranging from the most "natural" to the most "stylized," along with the ability to change quickly and easily from one behavior to another as the dramatic moment dictates and maintain a strong link between movement and the emotional life it expresses.

Good movement training for the actor consists of "considerably more ... than simply training an actor to be a Ôfit' person or a veritable virtuoso of performance skills," (8) says Anne Dennis in her book The Articulate Body; "... we are not simply talking about the actor who can somersault through space or who can perform a mean tap dance..." (18) Instead, she envisions an approach wherein "...each part of the actor's instrument [must be] tuned to respond to all internal and external influences; and these responses must be visible to the audience. The basis of the actor's craft is to reflect through his physicality all that is happening inside: to make the invisible visible." (19) I find particularly compelling her presentation of the idea of diction in an actor's movement vocabulary - the need for articulation, emphasis, and even punctuation in the pursuit of clarity of behavior. (44)

The well-trained actor will have a wide range of vocal, facial and physical behaviors to choose from at any given moment in a performance. It is equally important, however, that the actor understand how those choices are made. At any given moment in a singing actor's performance, behavior can be either externally or internally determined. Externally-determined behavior is behavior which is "set" in advance; it can take the form of blocking, choreography, business or other behavior set by the director, choreographer or conductor, or behavior which the actor himself has chosen and planned prior to the performance. In contrast, internally-determined behavior is spontaneous and unplanned, occurring in reaction to some stimulus or change in the world of the play or an intuitive process on the part of the actor.

Certain performance-training approaches tend to favor either the "outside-in" or the "inside-out" approach. Some schools of actor training, for instance, counsel the actor to "leave yourself alone" and focus on being "in the moment," in the belief that the most compelling life-like behavior will result from such an approach. Obviously, this approach will often be at odds with the more externally-driven nature of many musical theater performance choices, which are dictated by the score, the choreography, and the complex, stylized nature of the typical musical production. What is more, the need for a quality of spontaneity must be balanced with a sense of consistency in a performance that will be presented repeatedly.

However, to focus merely on externals is to risk creating stage behavior which is flat and mechanical. "Everything must begin from the interior -- if outward, only form," advises director and teacher Etienne Decroux (quoted in Dennis, 29). What is more, to limit one's behavioral choices to those which have been externally imposed is to fail to access the rich resources of the actor's intuition. Clearly, then, the best stage behavior incorporates elements of both processes, and the singing actor-in-training needs opportunities to explore the relationship between inner life and outer behavior in a variety of ways. Like form and content, the external behavior of an actor and his inner emotional life are inseparably linked, and considerable effort should be devoted to building a strong link between them.

We have spoken of the need for a rich and articulate set of behaviors which embody certain qualities and of the two complementary processes by which those behaviors are created and selected by the actor. But no behavior, regardless of how interesting or expressive it is, has value unless it derives from and serves to communicate the dramatic event as envisioned by the authors and their interpreters, the director and choreographer. The foundation of all behavior is the ability to clearly define the dramatic event - who is doing what to whom and why - and articulate it on a moment-by-moment basis. The actor needs to link behavior to a sense of passionate purpose, and pursue ways to practice and strengthen this linkage. This is the key to achieving each of the four qualities of authenticity, specificity, intensity and variety.

In the preceding discussion, I have tried to outline a conceptual framework which delineates the territory the singing actor needs to explore in the studio, beginning, as is my wont, with the end in mind. Having come to thus understand the territory during my years of teaching, I have attempted to devise various exercises - etudes, if you will - which allow the student to inhabit and investigate that territory without becoming sidetracked by the specific requirements of any particular song or piece of repertoire.

In his book The Presence of the Actor, actor and director Joseph Chaikin offers this perspective on the process of devising and trying out exercises:

Exercises are very important. When I can envision a kind of behavior, a kind of ambiance, a kind of interrelating, a kind of environment, a kind of physical life, and kinds of sounds, then, if I find the proper exercise, I invite the actor to inhabit that realm. The exercise will surely be different from what I first thought it might be, because what happens is always different from what's planned. Between me and the actors that which has been transformed from idea into action becomes the meeting place. (Joseph Chaikin, The Presence of the Actor, New York: Atheneum, 1987, 133)

In attempting to describe some of my own exercises, however, I have encountered a difficulty which Chaikin also refers to in his book:

... In books which document exercises, I feel that I am reading a book of recipes, whether they are exercises by Stanislavski, Viola Spolin or the Open Theater. The reason they cannot be documents is because it is an internal territory. If the actor could explain it, the exercise would be unnecessary. The exercise is an agreed-upon structure. The structure can be explained yet is empty of content. An exercise is untranslatable. (Chaikin, 133-4)

Having acknowledged this difficulty, I will try to briefly outline a series of activities which I invite the reader to envision or try out in a studio setting. For the teacher, I offer a few suggestions regarding what to look for and ways of coaching the student to make the exercises more useful. Limitations of space in this written presentation preclude an exhaustive discussion of possible variations, but teacher and performer alike are encouraged to discover their own variations, as I have, by using the preceding principles to guide their use of these activities.

One essential tool which the teacher or student will want to have on hand to work with is a set of index cards containing various behavioral catalysts. When using these exercises in class, I will often call out verbs, adjectives or phrases from cards or hand the students cards containing keywords during the exercise. Over the years I have developed a number of useful sets, including:

1. action verbs: to threaten, to cajole, to flatter, to apologize, etc. Action verbs should be those that a character can really do to another character, with the expectation of a response.
2. adjectives: giddy, grave, hysterical, calm, curious, etc.
3. musical instructions: forte, piano, staccato, legato, parlando, cantabile
4. one-word text cards: "Please," "Never!," "Why?," "Stop!"
5. short phrase text cards: "I don't understand," "It's not important," "I hate you"
6. Laban effort-action cards: Rudolf Laban developed a scheme for classifying movement based on tempo (quick or sustained), direction (direct or indirect) and weight (heavy or light). These three pairs can be combined in eight permutations, as follows:

It is advisable to have plenty of cards in each category, enough so that there are several for each student when working as a group. (In the case of the Laban effort actions, this entails making multiple cards for each of the eight.) I also encourage students to prepare a set of these catalysts cards to use when practicing alone. I have found medium sized (4x6) cards easiest to handle.

Vocalise and Warmup. Vocalise - that is, the singing of patterns of pitches and syllables designed to exercise the voice - is a part of every serious singer's daily routine. With a high level of concentration on vocal technique, vocalise can be quite challenging. However, by expanding the notion of vocalise to include non-vocal behaviors, the process can be made to serve the developmental needs of the singing actor even more effectively.

Using the vocabulary introduced previously, we can regard vocalise as a structured investigation of vocal behavior, and such work is of unquestionable value to the singing actor. In my experience, however, it is essential that students remain aware that the voice does not exist independent of the face and body. The singing actor uses his voice, face and body to project and communicate the thoughts and feelings of a character in a dramatic situation, and using a dramatic concept of singing to energize any one of the projective modes will inevitably affect them all. For these reasons, I encourage the singing actor to routinely incorporate a range of facial and physical behaviors into his vocal warmup. These include facial masks, different types of focus, gestures and movement in the space. I also use the catalyst cards so that students can explore the effect of different dramatic actions, adjectives, musical instructions, effort-actions or subtext choices on their vocal, facial and physical behaviors.

A general observation applies to this work as well as all that follows: Whenever a student practices creating behavior, they should be alert to the inner emotional response that behavior may evoke. Using the Laban cards, for instance, a "punching" effort action (quick, direct and strong) used as a basis for vocal, physical and facial behavior may conjure up feelings of anger and agitation within the singer, while a "dabbing" effort action (quick, indirect and light) may create feelings of playfulness or childlike whimsy. Any behavioral choice can be linked to the inner emotional process, and conversely, all choices made regarding the inner emotional process must be translated into behavior for it to be evident to the viewer.

Leading and following. Early in the training process, I find it very useful to explore a cluster of exercises which center on the idea of leading and following. The Mirror is a fundamental exercise presented in Viola Spolin's Improvisation for the Theater, and I value the way in which it makes concrete and physical the abstract notions of the give-and-take that occurs between two characters in a dramatic situation. The Mirror and its cousin, the Conductor exercise (in which one student leads in movement while one or more students respond with sound - much like an orchestra conductor in front of a group of musicians), are both deceptively simple, but provide a useful framework for exploring a number of behavioral issues and a means for getting students to develop an approach which is both playful and serious. Both build focus and flexibility, and the experience of being "leader" and "follower" are both useful to the psychological development of the actor.

The idea of leading and following, initiating and imitating, can be explored by a larger group (a dozen or so) in the "echo game" which Balk describes in The Complete Singer-Actor (Balk, 116-118), which is built upon the basic concept of mirroring but alternates between the individual and the group. It is a short step from this exercise to the "sound-and-movement transformation" exercise developed by Joseph Chaikin and described by Robert Pasolli in A Book on the Open Theatre. The first of my etudes, "The Mirror Canon," takes the principles of the mirror a step further by adding a musical structure to it.

The Mirror Canon can function as a class warmup, and indeed it appears to resemble a ballet barre in its tone and musical structure, but it provides a format for a complete workout of all three projective modes. The music for the etude (which appears on the following page) is easily learned. Divide the group into two lines facing one another and have each of the two lines sing one voice of the canon. Once the students have mastered the musical form of the exercise, instruct the group singing the leading voice in the canon to add some behavior to each one-measure phrase of the canon, and instruct the line singing the "mirror" voice to mirror that behavior as well. At the end of a full nine-measure cycle, the music modulates up a half-step and the group of students who had been following now takes the lead for the next cycle. Have the two lines of students take turns leading and following. After a few cycles, it is often useful to have a student from the end of one line move to the other end of the line, so that each student in that line will shift to a new partner on the opposite line.

Leading the group through repetitions of this exercise, I coach them to explore vocal behaviors (vowel sounds, dynamics, timbre), facial "masks," "gesture statements" (poses) and movements (maintaining the tempo and quality of the movement for an entire one-measure phrase, then changing it for the next phrase). I also use the Laban effort-actions and other catalyst words, either singly or in contrasting pairs, and if students have prepared a solo song or scene to present in class, I invite them to choose behaviors appropriate to the song and the character and "try them out" through this exercise.

Depending on the starting key and the number of modulations, students can cover a substantial vocal range, and the facial and physical behaviors created in the exercise release a surprising amount of vocal energy. Indeed, I routinely remind the students to breathe and support their singing, since they often find themselves unintentionally yelling. Since students alternate leading and following (initiating behavior and imitating behavior) and work with a variety of partners, they have the chance to participate in a wide range of behaviors during the course of the exercise. It is useful to remind both leaders and followers to truly "inhabit" the behavior they create, that is, to connect that behavior to some emotional and dramatic inner life.

The energy and variety created by a group of students working together is a beneficial aspect of undertaking this sort of work in a studio class, as opposed to a private lesson. When it comes time to "go to the woodshed" and practice, the singing actor should be encouraged to work with all these behaviors, paying particular attention to those that seem most unfamiliar or uncomfortable, to see if they can enhance the qualities of Variety, Intensity, Specificity and Authenticity (VISA) in their work .