Tutor Interview: Singing Academy for Actors
Singing Academy for Actors: Online offers a bespoke and intensive look at singing from an actor’s perspective, and is led by RADA's lead singing tutor, Jane Streeton, and singing teacher Philip Raymond, co-authors of Singing on Stage: An Actor’s Guide. Students work with songs of their choice, learning techniques and strategies to improve their singing from both a musical and dramatic point of view.
We caught up with course director Jane Streeton to learn more about the course content and how singing can enhance an actor's technique.
How would you describe the Singing Academy for Actors course?
The course is for anyone over the age of 16 at any stage of their training or career. We teach individually within a group setting and we aim to take the student onto the next step for them.
It’s often overwhelming to sing a song from scratch, without having studied the component parts, so in the five days we have, we take students on a journey of deconstructing and reconstructing a song, which then provides a blueprint for future singing work. It’s an exploration of text, character and story-telling. Extraordinary things happen when these elements meet music with its rhythm, melody and harmonic structure, not to mention the nuance of style and what that aspect can give an actor imaginatively. Singing is also, for most students in our experience, an activity where the rigour of gaining ownership of a song can open up aspects of acting that can be transferred into other areas.
Is there something that you feel is often lacking in actors' approaches to singing?
Actors often regard singing as a separate discipline to acting. An inexperienced actor-singer will often try to make tone or resonance in their singing instead of communicating with tone and this is a fundamentally different mindset. Our approach at RADA is more organic and we specifically apply an actor’s toolkit to the art of singing, using their skills in communication and expression through text as the main ingredient in the process and then build their musicianship and vocal ability around that. We work from the basis of the actor’s authentic speaking voice and develop from there in terms of pitch range, expressive range and volume.
If you think about musical theatre as an example, why does an actor go from speech to singing? It's usually when speech is not enough. Singing is a format that’s expressive of very strong emotions. It's an extension of your acting technique and part of your interpretation of a character.
What sort of strategies and techniques are used in the courses?
Anyone can already sing... big statement, yes! We all possess some kind of innate ability and this may be why singing is such a popular art form. Very often though, through a lack of opportunity or even being actively discouraged from singing in early life, people can 'close doors' on our singing apparatus, both mentally and physically. We help actors on our course to open these doors back up by discovering and nurturing the key elements of the voice in song. Once these have been discovered, regular practice will soon yield very positive results and together with a more “tuned up” voice, there will be greater clarity and concentration on what is truly necessary.
In the course, we learn how to break a song down into its component parts and put it back together again. We analyse the melody in terms of pitches and rhythms and learn how to work with the text - how to articulate words in a technical way and express those thoughts in line with what the composer and lyricist has written. We also learn technical vocal exercises to develop the voice in terms of pitch range, breath, resonance and articulation.
What do you hope students will gain from the course?
Greater confidence and enjoyment in their singing. To find authenticity in their vocal tone and the ability to express themselves with enhanced musicality and a sense of freedom. Plus, it’s great fun!
Apply now
Singing Academy for Actors runs online from Monday 12 - Friday 16 Dec 2022. Apply now.