The Best Performance Advice I Ever Received
This blog entry was originally posted on 24th February 2023. The ending has been rewritten due to loss of the original text and new insights since original publication.
The performing arts industry is full of advice for aspiring actors, from educators teaching at drama schools and workshops, to fellow performers like me sharing their own experience (cue a cheeky plug for my YouTube Channel and my articles for Spotlight and Backstage).
A lot of this advice tends to be aimed at 'beginners' who are new to the industry or to a specific skill within the performing arts. But when I was at drama school, I received one piece of advice that has continued to pay dividends over my 8 years as a professional actor.
The Royal Academy of Music
This particular piece of advice was given to me by Mary Hammond, the founder of the Musical Theatre Course at The Royal Academy of Music (RAM). When I trained there, Mary was no longer the head of the course, but she was still teaching Integration Class (a.k.a. Acting Through Song). This was a group class where we'd each bring a song and, essentially, be coached on how to perform it better.
For context, I don't believe Mary ever gave me a direct piece of advice that I found particularly insightful or encouraging. She was definitely a teacher who, in my opinion, had her favourites and I was not one of them. But the beauty of group classes is that you can learn from everyone's feedback. And this was the one gem of hers that has stuck with me over the years:
You can only sing with the voice you have.
If you've never had to sing on stage, this sentence may seem obvious. Of course you can only sing with the voice you have - who else's voice would you sing with? But when you train in musical theatre, singing makes up the majority of your classes. At RAM we were drilled on our technique. We were constantly learning new songs for lessons, classes and projects. And this intense environment fostered a culture of perfectionism: of always striving for the perfect placement of a note, the complete mastery of a vocal quality, to prove you're worthy of being among your peers and on a West End stage.
Romeo and Juliet, Moving Stories Theatre Company
But here's the thing: performers are human. Sometimes we get sick or breath something in onstage (both of which have happened to me - more on that later). Sometimes we have an unexpected emotional reaction and are caught off guard. And all of these things can affect the voice in ways we may be unable to control. We go out of tune or our voice cracks or we lose our voice all together. How do you find the courage to keep going in spite of these setbacks? How do you console yourself when you give a performance that's not your best through no fault of your own?
You remember: You can only sing with the voice you have.
This advice helped me the most during a short tour at the end of 2019. I was in a one-woman show called Lady of Jazz about a 1920s jazz singer, and the final leg of the tour was three nights at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester. I don't know what I'd caught, but during those last three days I almost completely lost my voice, to the point where we considered cancelling one of the shows. I made the decision to go ahead, we transposed and cut down almost all of the numbers and I went on.
It was the hardest performance I’ve every given in my life. I cried onstage behind the set during one of my costume changes (thank god for vamps!). The pain, frustration and helplessness of my voice not doing what I knew it could do was visceral. But I got through the show. That night, a director who I’d worked with before was in and he gave me a big huge after the show. He could see how much I had struggled. But his friend said he couldn’t tell that I had no voice and other audience members congratulated me in the bar afterwards.
Another vocal mishap happened when I was in The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, to this day one of my favourite jobs I’ve done. In the song where the toys in Drosselmyer’s shop come to life, my character, Maria, opens a book and blows out some feathers mid-song. Sods law that in one of the performances I breathed in a tiny bit of feather. It’s not fun trying to get through your big solo number whilst supressing a coughing fit! But I got through it.
In both of these situations I did everything I could to be in the best voice possible. But honey, steam and vocal rest can only do so much. In an industry that’s increasingly looking for big vocals and virtuosic performance, we can all to easily view our own voices with contempt and distain. This can even spill into our general attitude, even when we’re in good voice - something that I’ve struggled with for a long time.
Our voices are unique and beautiful. They have their own timbre. They’re a part of our physical being. And sometimes they’re weary and need rest. We need to give ourselves and our voices grace, or risk ruining the special bond we have with the most intimate of instruments. The one bond that no one can take away from us.
Let’s sing with the voice that we have and love our voice with all our heart.