I’m sure all of you are great actors – you have to be to go into this business (yay triple threat!). But can you act while you’re singing? It’s a lot harder to do two things at once (multi-tasking is not actually a thing), so there are special rules involved when you’re acting and singing at the same time. Of course, it helps when writers write actable songs. But once you find an actable song, here are some tips for you to powerhouse them:

• Practice singing to the point of muscle memory. I realize I say “practice” for just about every Sunday tip, but seriously, the more you know the music, the more naturally it’ll come, and the less you’ll be thinking about it, leaving room for your acting skills to shine.
• Associate certain actions and facial expressions with certain words and phrases or notes and musical phrases. One benefit you have of music is that it can spark different cues for you and give you more opportunities to do various things on stage that plays/speaking alone doesn’t.
• Act through your voice. Just because you’re singing doesn’t mean you have to sing pretty. If the song is about sadness or anger, your voice shouldn’t always sound perfect. The one thing that’s great about this is that for the notes that take all of your energy and focus, even after practicing-practicing-practicing (see first bullet), you can at least still sing the emotion and personality of the character in those notes.

In short, use the acting and singing to help each other, not hurt each other.

Check out our #NMTvotw by Celeste Rose, singing “On Monday” (girl/boy) by Ryan Scott Oliver. She acts throughout the whole song with ease because the notes are coming naturally through her, and then at the end when she needs to concentrate on the music, she uses that anger to push those notes through the water.

The post #NMTVotW: Acting While Singing appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.