Welcome to Voice and Speech for Non-Majors THEA 2060
Course Description
This is an introductory course in voice and speech training. The department looks upon voice as being the entire communication chain from the moment of the need to communicate, the voicing of the need, through the articulation of the speech sounds, to what is received by the hearer. The emphasis will be on freeing the natural voice in order to free the individual from the unnecessary tensions, blocks and patterns, which inhibit communication. This will be done through a series of physical and vocal exercises to develop an awareness of the body and the voice. There will be a degree of physical interaction. All of the exploratory work will be linked into specific skills for the presentation of various forms of text. Work will be done in and out of class time for the presentation of various pieces of text to be selected by the student.
The work of the class will include: physical and vocal
explorations starting from the basic exercises of the "classic warm-up";
visualizations and guided imagery of the physical/vocal instrument; sound and
speech sound explorations; introductory discussion of human anatomy as involved
in creating speech sounds; application of this work to the presentation of a
variety of texts.
...And the
end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the
place for the first time.
~T.S. Eliot
