Sensory Acting Techniques & Singing

Fine singers seldom analyze the things they do in performance. Instead, . . . the imagination is freed for artistic expression by motor actions that are consistently repeatable. This constitutes the psychological and physical control of performance (3).

In other words, once a singer achieves technical mastery, he or she can begin to focus on what is being sung and why. Once a singer learns how to sing, he or she can then begin to learn how to act through the music.

Hagen argues that acting begins with talent. She defines talent as ôan amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting - intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate oneÆs own experience and sensations, to make oneÆs point heard and seenö (13). All these qualities, if initiall

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the singer conjures up the memory and then tries to overcome it. As Hagen contends, ôThe sensation occurs most fully at the moment when we are occupied with the attempt to overcome it, not when we wait for it while trying only to imagine and remember itö (56). Sense memory, therefore, is not only the ability to fully recall a particular sensation but is then the additional skill at trying to surmount the sensation and move on to the task at hand. Hagen differentiates the terms sense memory and emotional memory, calling the first a primarily physiological recall and the second a primarily psychological process. She argues, ôIn life, an emotion occurs when something happens to us which momentarily suspends our reasoning control and we are unable to cope with this event logicallyö (47). Emotional memory requires recalling the psychological and physical expressions of this loss of control without giving in to it by finding a substitution that provokes the same emotional release. She notes that recalled emotional experience often can be triggered by some small detail that has become associated in the individualÆs mind with that psychological state. She suggests telling a friend about a strong emotional memory and attempting t
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Approximate Word count = 1336
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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