If your child is working towards a Speaking in Public, Verse and Prose, Reading for Performance or Acting exam, they will be required to memorise text.
That could be a speech, a poem, a piece of prose or a monologue. The examiner will be looking for them to lift the words off the page and deliver them with vocal expression and spontaneity.
It’s an amazing skill to engage an audience by delivering text and is something that will benefit your child right through into adulthood.
When memorising text, we may find ourselves emphasising certain words or speaking at an unchangeable pace. However, if you stick to these habits, the text may come across as a little wooden or rehearsed.
Legendary Royal Shakespeare Company voice coach Cicely Berry developed a range of great exercises which you can do with your child to help them express their text with spontaneity.
Run across the room saying one line at a time
Once your child knows their piece off by heart, get them to run quickly across the room from one side to the other speaking one line or sentence at a time. This exercise is fantastic at helping them make the words their own. Once they’ve done this, they can always try speaking their text whilst doing other physical activities such as keepie uppies with a football.
Cicely Berry also recommends taking a load of books off the shelf, scattering them around the room and putting them back whilst reciting your speech. By focusing on a physical activity, your child may surprise themselves in their delivery and it will open up the range of their vocal expression.
Speak the text walking around the room changing direction on every punctuation mark, even commas
This exercise is great at helping students identify the changing emotional states within the text. If they’ve formed any habits with the pace of their recital, this exercise will allow them experience new rhythms and get under the skin of the character or the speaker.
It will help them to convey the emotion of the words more clearly so that the ideas expressed in the writing are clear to an audience.
Get The Family to Heckle Them!
Heckle (gently of course!) your child as they speak their text and get them to answer you back using only the words on the page. Ask them questions such as, “who did?”, “what happened?”, “when?” Younger family members may also wish to join in with this!
This exercise can completely eliminate habits and they’ll discover the ‘need’ behind the writer or character using the words on the page.
I’ve often seen this exercise helps students with their articulation. When they’re being heckled, they’re more likely to speak the words more clearly and with appropriate emphasis and inflection.
These exercises will help your child give life to the words on the page and help them use a greater range of vocal expression to engage an audience.
Do give them a try when helping your child with their next LAMDA piece and let me know how they get on!
