Alexa: [00:00:00] This week I am joined by my fellow BAST teammate, Molly Marie Walsh, to explore acting through song and the idea of gesture mapping. 

Together we're unpacking some practical acting techniques that can help singers to communicate authentically, make purposeful physical choices, and create performances that are both vocally sustainable and dramatically compelling. 

From the likes of Meisner and the introduction of a technique named SAVI, to storytelling and practical teaching strategies, this episode is packed with insights for singing teachers, vocal coaches, performers, and musical theatre students looking to bring any song to life. 

Molly, welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing?  

Molly: Oh, I'm good, thanks. Very happy to be back.  

Alexa: Did you survive your weekend in my company?  

Molly: Uh, it was an absolute pleasure. Are you kidding me? It's so nice as an adult to, to [00:01:00] find a new friend.  

Alexa: And the weekend, we're talking about the BAST intensive weekend that we had recently in Manchester, which went really, really well and always good to meet the team and see people in 3D. 

Molly: I know. It was absolutely amazing that I've worked with all of you for, I think at least, like, four or five years now, and it's the first time I was meeting anyone in person, so it was really nice to know that everybody has a, a lower half to their body. Yeah.  

Alexa: Yeah. 

Something that was quite popular at the intensive was your SAVI cards, and we'll come onto that a little bit later 'cause this is all linked. 

But to get us going, can you tell us someone who you think gives a real masterclass in acting through song as a performer?  

Molly: Yeah, I'm gonna go really old school in my answer, although she's, she's still going, but I'm gonna say Bernadette Peters is always kind of my number one choice.  

Alexa: I think I've shared this on the podcast before, but when I think of that question, I always think of Judi Dench [00:02:00] singing Send In The Clowns. 

Molly: Oh, yeah, that is a really great performance as well, actually. And I think both of them doing Sondheim, multiple times is another kind of clue. So, you know, Bernadette Peters has been in the original Sunday In The Park With George, the original Into The Woods. She's done a revival of Follies recently. She's sung songs from Follies numerous times. I saw her in that role in a revival of A Little Night Music. 

But yes, Judi Dench's performance is excellent, and I think with both of them, what you have is you have an amazing balance of vocal production and clarity in their emotional life and also communicating those things through their facial expressions and their physical life. 

And sometimes it can be really, really subtle, and that's definitely related to what we're gonna talk about today.  

Alexa: There are so many different acting [00:03:00] techniques that we may or may not have heard of or come across or even tried. Some of the well-known ones are from the likes of Konstantin Stanislavski, spelt with an I or a Y, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner, Rudolf Laban. 

What are your experiences with these methods?  

Molly: So a lot of those are very connected. Many of those people worked with one another, were influenced by one another. And so it's interesting to see, again, since the last time I was on, I was talking about the history and how that was important. I always go back to that. 

You know, there was a lot going on at the turn of the century, the 1900s into the 1930s with styles of acting, and so you had this movement with Stanislavski in Russia, and he very much influenced Stella Adler. She worked with him. 

And, uh, Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner in America were both kind of taking those ideas and then created something new when they were part [00:04:00] of the Group Theater in the 1930s, which was really revolutionary about bringing this idea of realism. So kind of that evolution from what we see as maybe the kind of classical, dramatic, big gestured pantomime or Shakespearean acting that we get into what we now say is more truthful. 

The most experience that I have had in terms of acting training is Meisner training, and in fact, my Meisner teacher was Ernie Losso, who was Sanford Meisner's protege. So he was trained by Sanford Meisner, and then we were lucky enough in my university to have Ernie as a teacher, and he's quite well known within the acting community there. 

And Meisner's quote about acting is that acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, and I think that really says it all. 

Because [00:05:00] I don't know, sometimes you meet people, and if you say you're an actor, they say, "Oh, you must be really good at lying," and I'm terrible at lying, and I think that's Meisner's quote, it kind of explains why that is, is no, no, no, we're not, we're not lying. We are telling the truth, just under fictional circumstances. 

And I think we often hear about method acting as well, that's a, a very big one, and Meisner's technique was kind of going a little bit in the opposite direction of method acting. Method acting was very much about like sense memory, taking your own experiences and, kind of digging them up again to find those emotions. 

But, especially in in today's, um, culture where we are very much aware of sort of mental health and trauma, the techniques of method acting can actually be a little bit dangerous for long-term performance, especially when we're talking about theatre, when you have to [00:06:00] create that story multiple times a week, usually eight times a week. You will often hear stories of method actors who really struggle to separate the experience of their character and their personal experiences, and it can be quite traumatising. 

So the Meisner technique in some ways feels a little more, sustainable, because you are finding those connections for the character, but it's much more about the actions and what you're doing and how you can connect those actions to, your character. 

So for example, one of my teachers would say, "Okay, so your action is you're gonna scrub the floor." So you've got no context, right? You're just scrubbing the floor. So we're gonna start by just doing the action. Then he would say, "Okay, but why are you scrubbing the floor? Maybe you're scrubbing the floor because you just knocked over a vase that belonged to your [00:07:00] great-grandmother that was handed down to you, and it's the last important item in your family, and you've just broken it, and you've spilled, like, wine on the floor." So now you're cleaning something up, and you have all of these additional things that are happening, that are connecting through that action, and we don't even have any dialogue yet. So that's kind of an example of, like, what you're doing. 

And it's not, it's not you personally. You may be able to connect to it because you have family, but it's about this character and putting into the action something truthful.  

Alexa: Thinking about using some of your own experiences and memories... back when I was studying on my first degree that I then changed, I just remember having the instruction from my scene partner... the teacher had instructed him to whisper something to me before going on stage that was very much related to a past trauma, let's say. 

And I don't know how helpful that is, [00:08:00] and I, I think it's, as you say, it can be quite dangerous. So, how do we know when we're pushing the boundaries with an instruction that we're giving?  

Molly: Yeah, I think a lot of that school of thought is it's quite manipulative. 

First of all, it removes trust for you and your scene partners. If you think, well, they could do anything, it's unpredictable. So that's not creating a safe environment to work in. 

Sometimes playing off of your own experiences can, eventually become neutral. If you're kind of playing this character and you're every night trying to drum up your own memory of that personal experience, at some point it could actually become quite boring. You maybe just have done it so many times that you're like, "Well, I don't have any feeling about it now because I've done it so many times." 

So a lot of it we wanna kind of maybe draw the line on where we feel empathy, because that is kind of the biggest strength, I think, that artists have. [00:09:00] Actors, singers, dancers, musicians, any kind of creative field. I think what it comes down to is why do we want to be creative? Because we have empathy. 

We see the world in a particular way. We see relationships, human behaviour, and we are compelled to create and tell stories about it. And I think when you can find empathy with your character, that's that personal connection, and it doesn't mean that you have to have that experience. 

I mean, another thing that Ernie used to say is, you know, I always felt like I struggled a bit in the beginning with the technique because I felt like I hadn't experienced a lot. 

I even remember saying something like, "I know I'm quite lucky, but I don't feel like I've had a lot of like dramatic losses or heartache, and so is that gonna mean I'm not a good actor?" And he, of course, would always say, "Well, no, absolutely not. That's not what it's about." 

So you don't have to have experienced those same things, but you can find that way into understanding, and I think that's where the [00:10:00] actions and the objectives come into play. 

So everything that we did was creating with doing something. 

One of the very first things that you do in Meisner, again, it's kind of like when you do a basic singing technique, you start very simple and very bare. You know, maybe you're just doing a humming sound just to get used to the quality of sound and the sensation. So the first, the first activity you do in Meisner is the chair exercise. 

So you sit in a chair across from your scene partner, and you just look at each other, and then when someone is compelled to say a word, you just say a word, and you're just looking at each other. You're quite close. And you might just say, "Blue," and then the person just repeats that word, and you just go back and forth repeating the word and taking in whatever you're getting from that partner, whether it makes you laugh. 

I remember with my scene partner, we might have started laughing. We [00:11:00] ended up crying. We were just saying the word blue, and there was nothing else happening. And again, that was not coming from manipulation. Nobody whispered anything. Nobody gave us a circumstance. It was just the two of us connecting, it was human connection. So it can be very exposing and very raw, but it's very powerful, and that's where you do need that sense of trust.  

Alexa: Some of these methods could be described as being inside out versus outside in. So can you just tell us a little bit about that? Define it for us.  

Molly: Yeah. So I do keep referring back to this, this time in my training, but it absolutely is what I do all the time now. 

So, uh, we had the Meisner training in our second year of school, and at the same time in our... So this was in our acting classes, and in the musical theatre programme, we were in acting classes with the acting majors, which again, I think is really great 'cause we were seen as the same level, which absolutely should be. Musical theatre [00:12:00] performers should not be considered different from straight acting, as they like to call it. 

So we had our, our Meisner acting classes, and then our acting through song classes were something that the head of the department was creating, a technique called the SAVI technique. 

He's, he's since then written a book on the technique, so The SAVI Singing Actor, and SAVI stands for specificity, authenticity, variety, and intensity. 

And the SAVI technique on the surface is very much an outside in technique, and Meisner at the time felt like an inside out technique. But the more that I have grown to use both of them at the same time, I can see how they are so related. 

But if we say that [00:13:00] Meisner is inside out, trying to find the emotional truth, you're always trying to feel like you're performing authentically and truthfully. That's the inside out. Then SAVI created the outside in because it gave us a gesture vocabulary, gesture tools, ways to map the song, as we called it. 

So it wasn't just our arms, it was also where we were looking with our eyes, so our focus shift. It was the facial expression, and it might be where we're going. 

So it was a way to structure your song so that you didn't just stand up and just make up whatever you were gonna do. And what was great about the SAVI technique, what is great about the SAVI technique, it's great for performers who struggle to think of movement, but it's also really good for p- performers like myself who maybe move too much [00:14:00] sometimes. 

Alexa: Can we talk about where we could actually find the clues to help us interpret a piece of material and communicate that song?  

Molly: Yeah. So if you have a well-written song, it's all gonna be there for you in the lyrics, the accompaniment, if, you know, it tends to be piano, you know, what kind of melodies or chord changes are happening in the accompaniment, and it's gonna be in the pauses, in the rhythm, , in the melody line. Why is your high note on this word? If it's a good composer, then that's gonna be there for a reason, and it's gonna feel connected to what your character is trying to say and trying to do. 

It's not gonna necessarily always work, and this is where you might have to be a little more creative if the song might be a little repetitive, you know, if it's really just one verse and it just repeats with maybe a couple key changes. I think you know who I'm talking [00:15:00] about. And so therefore, you might need to get a little more creative, but we always wanna start with what has the composer and lyricist given us. 

So I always like to start with my singers by I usually have them start by speaking the lyrics as if it were a monologue, and I do find that that is a very interesting approach because sometimes they'll want to speak it in the rhythm, and I say, "No, no, no, just say it the way you would say it so that we can find out where are the new ideas and thoughts and phrases and sentences, as opposed to thinking of it as a song. 

Let's think about what are you saying and why." 

Alexa: How does this influence for you how you have learned songs or how you might encourage other singers to learn the songs? 

I'm just thinking about teachers who have said before that actually they won't have the singer listen to the original. They'll have them listen to the instrumental [00:16:00] or just read the lyrics so they can get all of the sort of contextual information before they're sort of- biased towards what the original is doing. 

So yeah, how has that impacted you in your teaching?  

Molly: Yeah. Well, I always feel like everything is a tool in a toolbox. 

I would never say that there's one way , to approach learning, which is why I love having something like a gesture mapping tool and also knowing how to deal with subtext and emotional life, because I do think you need all of those things. But every song is gonna have slightly different requirements, and every learner is very different. 

So for many students they learn better by listening. But for other students, maybe they're gonna get too much in their head. I'm a very big advocate of doing your research and knowing the original intention, so [00:17:00] listening to original recordings to me is very important and informative, especially if you are struggling to get the rhythm of the song, the style that the c- composer wants, or the style of singing. Just hearing the original version can just pop you right into that to go, "Okay, so this is the intention." So maybe you're gonna listen to it a couple times just so you have that idea, and then you can put it away. 

It is a great challenge sometimes to try and learn a song without ever having listened to anything, especially a lot of the more contemporary ones where maybe there isn't quite a history of performance yet. I mean, like, there's a lot of new composers that maybe have just written song cycles or individual songs. Maybe if you are not very musical and you can't read music to learn a melody, then you can get someone else to do it. That is something I can do, and I do like to do that every now and then as a challenge to go, "I'm not even gonna listen to a [00:18:00] recording. What is this, and how do I interpret it?" But oftentimes with musical theatre, you do kind of want that context.  

Alexa: Is this approach of finding these clues the same for other styles, not just musical theatre, or is there anything that becomes nuanced to, like, pop?  

Molly: I think it is the same. I even had a singer, and I know, again, she's a musical theatre student, but when they're doing pop rock, and they're doing a song that has been put into a jukebox musical, that's the case where I don't want them to listen to the musical version. I want them to listen to the original artist version. Because you have to understand the genre you're coming from. If you don't listen to '90s alt rock, then you have no reference point, and you cannot sing that song the same way that you sing something from Mean Girls. 

So I do think it's the same, and even if you have students that don't do musical theatre, that they do pop or rock, it's something [00:19:00] to play with, you know? We are inherently animals that mimic. That's one of the things that humans do really spectacularly well, that we can hear and mimic not only other voices, but other sounds in the world. 

And for a lot of cultures, that is how music is shared and learned. It isn't about reading notes on a page. There is no written musical expression. It is just shared community from one to the other, either by generation or by the people around you. Someone creating a sound and an- another person echoing it and then adding to it and playing with it. 

And so having the opportunity to listen to different artists is just gonna give you so many more ideas to go, "Oh, not only you could do that, but that somebody can do that with their voice. Can I do that? Can I copy that sound? Let me try" And then, do I like it? Do I wanna [00:20:00] keep it? 

 So it's all about that play and exploration, and I do think that is really essential. We get a little bit bogged down in this training mindset that we forget about, like, just enjoying listening to music and just playing around.  

Alexa: Let's talk about the gesture mapping then. 

So what does it mean in terms of the SAVI technique?  

Molly: Okay, so with the SAVI technique, it really is about, like, planning your physical performance. And as we know in singing, no one thing happens in an isolated way, right? If you move your tongue then your larynx is gonna move, et cetera, et cetera. 

It's the same thing when you move your body when you're singing. If you move something in your body, it's probably gonna change something in your voice or cause a particular emotion to come out. This is where we talk about the outside in versus inside out. So [00:21:00] sometimes we can say to someone, "I want you to sing it angry" So that's the inside out, right? 

So they're gonna go, "Okay, I know what it is to be angry" And then they do it, and then that changes their voice, and then that might give them a change in their body. Maybe they automatically go like this. They clench their fists. And then therefore maybe they're clenching their jaw, and then therefore maybe their vocal cords are gonna constrict a bit, but that's the sound that they want. That's the inside out. You've given them an emotion, angry, and then boom, everything is in place. 

But maybe that's not gonna work very well for everybody. A lot of students, you know, maybe between the teenage age and young adult, so that university level, they can be very self-conscious. Their ability to play and be silly has really been blocked quite a lot. So sometimes that's hard for them to do. 

You also have neurodivergent students that are not always as [00:22:00] comfortable with nuanced emotions or being able to express those emotions that maybe they don't fully understand. But again, this is a complete spectrum, so it's not gonna be clear-cut. 

So therefore, why don't we try the other way around? Instead of saying be angry and therefore you're gonna clench your fists and then your voice is gonna constrict, what if we start with the fists instead? So you're gonna just say you're gonna clench your fists, and then your shoulders are gonna maybe come up, and then you're gonna maybe constrict your throat. 

That might help you to be angry, that you've actually done the physical bit that might cause that tension and that stress, and now you are angry because you've done that physical part. So that's where you get that physicalisation that might actually help solve that problem. 

On top of that, the gesture mapping means that you are playing with stuff, and then you are planning out [00:23:00] what you're gonna do. 

So you've said, yes, the clenching fists on this line really works for this part of the song. I like the way I sound. I like physically what I'm doing. It fits the intention, so I'm gonna write that down. That's my road map, right? 

Like if you're doing... this is, again, my choices are really random, Wherever He Ain't from Mack & Mabel, that's a great angry song. So you might be putting that right before your second 'wherever he ain't.' So you've got your first one maybe is gonna be a whisper, 'wherever he ain't', and then right next to the second one, you're gonna put clench fists, wherever he ain't, and that's gonna give you that emotional, vocal, and physical map. You've got it. 

And what that does, if you do that throughout your song, then it really gives you a sense of security and direction when you perform. You're not just getting up and [00:24:00] gonna go, "Well, okay, I really hope I know what to do with my arms, and I hope that I know how to use the stage, and I hope that all of those vocal qualities work out." 

You know they're gonna work because you've mapped it out, and you've put all those things together. You're gonna repeat it. And it's gonna be there every time.  

Alexa: Something which seems like it could be malleable in this process is if you find that there is a vocal effect that's coming along that you didn't actually want, you can reverse the steps and say, "Okay, that voice thing's coming in when you add in the shoulders or when you squeeze too hard with the fists." And so you can sort of change those things, whereas I guess that might be a little harder to change the internal instruction.  

Molly: That's absolutely true, and that's another thing that is another tool in this SAVI technique, is that you might choose different kind of cue words, and the words could be emotions, they could be [00:25:00] actions, they could be like a subtextual thought. 

And yeah, maybe you do figure that out. Maybe you do realise, actually, when I clench my fists and I raise my shoulders, I really can't sing that phrase very clearly. Okay, so that's not gonna work there. So then what you're gonna do is maybe the internal sentence is going to be, "Release," or, "Relax," or maybe in this case, you need to do something else with your hands. 

Maybe it's stretching your fingers there, that you still need the moment to be, energetic, but we can't be closed off, so we need to spread it out, and maybe it's pushing out, and that's gonna have that effect. So yeah, absolutely, because that's a huge obstacle for so many singers in any genre, is managing your adrenaline when you sing. 

I have a lot of singers who will say, "I'm fine in voice lesson singing that song, but the minute [00:26:00] I get on stage, A, B, and C happens." And a lot of that is related to... It's stress, but it's that positive stress of being on stage, and it's the adrenaline. And so do you automatically clench your s- stomach muscles, or is it your shoulders, you know, what is happening there? 

So using these tools are more active than saying, "Stop clenching your stomach" 'cause sometimes that's really hard to do. You're still thinking about it. So it gives you a distraction to think about something else, but it's putting you in the place that you need to be to get that successful vocal production. 

Alexa: This sort of goes back to something that we were talking about with Louisa Morgan on the podcast about acting through song, and how she was very much an advocate for the singer not having to genuinely experience the intensity of emotion when performing to make sure that their vocal health is also still in tact. 

Molly: I completely agree with that. I [00:27:00] think that's, again, coming back to.. and I don't wanna completely discount method acting, but to say that that can be one of the dangers of allowing your emotions to overcome your singing. I had a teacher who used to say, "You wanna get close to the flame, but you don't wanna let it burn you." 

And that's where we want that emotional truth, that living authentically in emot- imaginary circumstances, but being in control of our choices, right? This is where we don't want any of that manipulation to come into play. And I think in musical theatre it's particularly important. 

There has been a trend, particularly in the recent revival of Cabaret, for the Sally Bowles to sing the title song, well, really not sing it, just kind of get to the point where they kind of shout it, right? I don't know that it has the ef- [00:28:00] same effect that it would to actually hear the notes being sung. Because I think if we are in a musical and we are supposed to be singing, then there's a reason for that. If we were meant to be shouting, then we would have been given speech or it would've been written that way. 

We do have to find that balance, of allowing our emotions to be truthful and, and meaningful, but being able to control the vocal quality.  

Alexa: Yeah. And you know who does that really well for me is Marisha Wallace. We've just had a podcast on how belt is impressive but not the only tool in the toolbox. But Marisha Wallace for me is a really great example of someone who has an incredible belt, has variety in it, is able to control volume in it, has a really interesting shape. I saw her as Sally Bowles in Cabaret and she was phenomenal. In fact, I wanted to sort of have her voice in my tea. [00:29:00]  

Molly: She is actually who I was thinking of who didn't do that. Yeah. She's got great technique, great control, and she knows how to use her head voice quality as well, which makes it lovely. 

Yeah, her interpretation of the title song is a great balance of both of those things. I do think that happens a lot with the character of Sally Bowles because traditionally, in fact even originally, they tend to cast a person who is a stronger actor than a singer because that is what the character is. She is not really supposed to be a great singer. However, then you have someone like Liza Minnelli who does it in the film who is a great singer, but still conveys the idea that Sally Bowles is never going to be this great performer and is living this kind of dis- disillusioned life. So if we've written the notes to be this way, then we do want to hear them sung, and I think your example is great of Mir- [00:30:00] Marisha Wallace finding that balance of healthy, repeatable, successful vocal production, but absolutely no compromise on the emotional truth. 

Alexa: Some of the gesture mapping, you can totally see it within some of these methods that we mentioned earlier, and how they're all connected, and how things kind of branch out of one thing to another. I think remembering doing some Stanislavski work, there was some wringing actions involved, with the work of Arthur Lessac, who I've come across through Chris Johnson's course, he came up with this idea of body energies, N-R-G's. And there's three, I believe. There's buoyancy, there's potency, and then there's radiancy. And even as I was doing that then, I felt myself going towards like a lighter, floatier thing with buoyancy, and potency being this stronger stance, and then radiancy being a little bit of a jitter. And they can come with some actions or whatever that [00:31:00] might provoke in a singer, and then that outside in approach is taking how that feels in the body and then being able to internalise that and what it might do vocally to affect even a technical issue that we're having. 

And that's something that we haven't quite mentioned is in, in your experience, by using an outside in acting approach, how does that even affect technical explorations and, and does it actually fix, in bunny ears, a problem? 

Molly: I think it absolutely does. And yeah, that, that is very much in line with, I... 'Cause I'm not familiar with Arthur Lessac, but I am a little familiar with Laban and ViewPoints, and both of those techniques definitely have like ways to walk through the space. How does your character move? Do they have slicing actions or are they smooth and flowing? 

And that can be really useful for that character explanation. Just simple questions like how quickly or how slowly do they walk? Where do they put their energy [00:32:00] from? Are they walking from the hip? Are they walking from the shoulder? Are they walking from the chest? So that very much makes a difference. 

Yeah, actually, one thing I do all the time with my students when they are struggling to hold out a phrase, and this could be in their chest voice or in their head voice, is I have them do a massive squat. Not a plie, because a plie your centre of gravity's going straight down, but a s- a squat more like in, you know, working out where your, your bottom's going kind of at an angle to the back. And oftentimes that will activate some supporting breathing muscles is what is happening there. 

But I always use Cynthia Erivo as an example because if you watch a lot of her performances, but particularly like 'I Am Here' from The Colour Purple, she loves a squat, and I think she's doing that, like practically and emotionally. It works for both. It is very much in line with her character [00:33:00] and the moment of the song, but practically it allows her to get that belt quality out and extend those phrases. So I always have my students try it, and if it works, I'm like, work that into your staging of your song because it absolutely fits in that emotional moment. 

So yeah, finding those physical choices can often solve these vocal issues. And then that's another reason to keep it, because we don't have to be w- what d- they used to call it, park and bark. You don't have to just stand there and sing and be completely still. And even something like a squat on a long phrase, it's gonna make you look like you're really emotionally invested as well. 

So even if you aren't getting that, internal emotion, just the act of like squatting down and being really into it, or maybe scrunching your face, you know, is gonna get you that vocal quality.  

Alexa: Something that I really love doing in lessons is [00:34:00] if someone is particularly timid or feeling a little shy, is when they're ready, getting them to either march on the spot or jump around or catch and throw a ball, and sometimes I'll purposefully just make sure they can't catch it so they're a little bit more energised. 

And automatically their voice lifts, their volume is a little bit more surfaced and it can just be the key in without us having to go through vocal fold closure exercises there's a quick way into helping that singer to experience it. 

Equally, if a singer is seemingly quite choppy through a phrase that actually we want to be a little bit more legato, we could use something like a vv fricatives or SOVTs to help, but actually, a simple arm that then moves forward like a car going along the road, then you stop at the traffic [00:35:00] lights, that can actually just help give a visual to this invisible vocal line, and actually allow them to get straight through that.  

Molly: And we know as voice teachers that we have all this technical knowledge, but oftentimes it's not always useful to share it with our students. It kind of depends. And that's the same thing. We have so many different types of learners that for many students they don't really need to know that it needs to be this thick or thin folds. That doesn't really mean anything to them. 

So something a little more along the lines of a metaphor or an image can be really, really helpful. I think that kind of falls in line with a lot of the work that Heidi Moss has done, where she has so much scientific knowledge, so much neurological understanding of the voice, but she will often, for her students, not really tell them anything, but have them do something like drawing with two pens on a whiteboard or rubbing their hands [00:36:00] along the top of the piano for a longer phrase you know, without giving them context, just saying, "Okay, sing the phrase and do this." So very similar to what you're saying. 

Again, I think it's, it's opening those mimicry tools, this sensation of if my hands are smooth and continuous, then my voice will match that and be smooth and continuous. 

So that's really it's really exciting to have those options.  

Alexa: I really like that part of teaching, the sort of creating metaphors, and it really does give you a, an opportunity to learn more about that singer without it being too intrusive, you know? I, I remember s- speaking to students and saying, if they're looking quite tight, like, "What makes you feel quite, ah, chill and like that you enjoyed something?" 

And someone literally went, "Ah, The Summer I Turned Pretty." And I was like, "Right, we can use that. The Summer I Turned Pretty. You're sat on the couch watching an episode of that. Tell [00:37:00] me about it. What, what's happening? I've never watched it before." And then this rapport is being built as well as the technical foundations being able to be developed. 

Molly: Yeah. I have a student that... she saw colours, and she told me that once. She was like, "Yeah, I kind of, I kind of see colours when I sing." And I said, "Oh, okay. So when we did that sound, what colour was it?" So she would share the colours, and so that's what we would use is we would say, "Okay, great. So we want a blue on this sound. Okay, on this one, we're gonna want an orange." 

So it's a great thing to play with. And the, the specific SAVI technique isn't one thing either really. I mean, even within the book that Charlie has written on SAVI he talks about Meisner and references it, and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that he was developing these tools while the programme was kind of going along the way. 

So yeah, finding those connections and understanding that you can put these techniques together, I think that often can be challenging for [00:38:00] students who are training, is they often think that their various techniques are isolated and cannot go together, especially if you're looking at something like dance training versus acting training versus singing training, that you think they're kind of compartmentalised. 

I mean, even the idea that some of my universities, university students will say, "Oh, I'll ATS the song later," and use it as a verb, which makes me panic a little bit. 'Cause I go, "Well, there sh- it shouldn't be a separate thing. All of those things should work together." And it always makes it easier, like you said, when you understand the reference point of your student, how you can make those connections.  

Alexa: So show us the famous SAVI cards.  

Molly: Okay. So I think what I forgot to say before was that this, the name of my teacher who created it, Charlie Gilbert, and he was the head of the musical theatre department at the University of the [00:39:00] Arts, which is where I got my degree in Philadelphia in America. 

He has put together a book, and it comes with a pack of cards, and I think Heidi Moss has a similar set of emotion cards. I think Kaya also has emotion cards. These have got slightly different categories, so it's quite rainbow coloured, which is also incredibly satisfying. And you've got different categories. 

So you have cards that have adverbs, and in this case, we've got fierce. You've got music or voice, like, dynamics and phrasing, so on this one it is louder. So again, we're still including different approaches. And then you have adjustments that you might make, like more sustained. Sometimes the adjustments are move your neck. 

My favourite thing, I think this is most of my students' favourite things, are the face cards. So you have actual [00:40:00] pictures of people making different faces. And the way that you should use these cards, again, it is about play, and I really think that everything in art has to come down to play and exploration. Getting out of your head in a way. 

The way you use the cards is you have your students sing... you usually don't want to do a whole song to start. A part of the song. They have to know it well enough, so even if they're learning a new song, maybe you're gonna make sure that they're really comfortable with just, like, one phrase. 

Okay, they know this verse really, really well, like four lines, done. So now you're gonna say, "Okay, you're gonna sing it again, and I'm gonna hold up a card, and you just have to do whatever the card says or copy the face. Don't think about it. It doesn't matter if it is actually related to what you're singing or not. 

It could be completely the opposite. You're just gonna do it." And what always happens is laughter always ensues, especially with the face cards, or maybe if it's a [00:41:00] confusing word. Like, one of, one of the words is onomatopoeia. And one of my teen students, it was hilarious 'cause he didn't know what that meant, and even when I explained it he just didn't quite get it for a while. 

He just kept, like, shouting the word, which just made us both laugh, 'cause we were like, "That's not what that means, but that's fine." And they come out of that phrase, and it is, it's always really effective. They just go, "Oh my gosh, that was so funny." And I usually say, "Okay, well what, what things were, like, kind of really good?" 

And they might say, "Well, I thought that this word didn't make sense for my song, but actually I really liked the way I sung that line because of it," or, "I loved that gesture. I never would've thought of it." And so it's just a really great way to explore without putting the pressure on the student to come up with the descriptive words, 'cause that's really hard, even as grown-ups on the spot. 

If you say, "Come up with an adjective," first of all, we have to remember what that means sometimes and go back to your, like, grammar rules. What, [00:42:00] which part of the sentence is that? So just having those words thrown in front of you, just playing with it and seeing what happens, is just a great way to have a, a way to approach the song that you didn't think of. 

And oftentimes opposites are the best thing. Even when you think about, like, a very emotional song. If you have cried in real life, oftentimes you're not trying to cry, you are trying not to cry. Like me watching any Pixar movie, I always cry, but I'm with my kids and I'm trying really hard not to cry, and then it comes out. 

So you're not, you're not thinking, "I need to cry right now, I need to cry right now." So oftentimes when you are singing a sad song, being sad is not the most effective way to do it. Sometimes singing a sad song with a smile on your face is actually way more heartbreaking, not just for you as a performer, but for the audience as well. 

The other element to all of these gestures and actions isn't just for you as a performer, [00:43:00] but it's for the performance, for the audience. Because everything that we are doing is giving the audience a clue about the character and the story. And you have to imagine, again, going back to musicals, if somebody is sitting in the audience, let's imagine they have never heard the music before and they don't know the story, so they are looking for information all the time to understand what's going on. 

If you stand and you sing a song and you don't move, then the information to the audience will be maybe they're bored or maybe they're scared or maybe it's very serious, but maybe they won't hear any difference between one lyric and the next. 

So everything that you do, even moving your head from the centre to the left, is telling them something. Or even just moving your eyes. Now, maybe not everyone in the audience is gonna see that, but some people will see that slight change if you look [00:44:00] up to the corner or if you blink. Just one tiny little movement. All of that is giving the audience a clue about your character and what's going on. So to plan these things out is going to make your performance even that much more effective, because you're giving them really specific physical clues as opposed to just whatever you thought of that day. 

Alexa: And it's the nuance of it, isn't it? When we feel stuff, we're not usually feeling just one thing. Like, we've usually got a mixture of or a cocktail of something happening that creates this certain tier of the emotion, if you like. 

But also playing charades, I have some emotions cards. They're not as good as the SAVI ones, so I think I might have to make a purchase. Thank you , Charlie Gilbert. 

But actually getting the singer to make nuanced changes to their movement or gesture to put the audience or the guessing audience on the right track. 

 If I have a parent sitting in, for [00:45:00] example, which I do on some of my students, I'll have the singer sing the song intentionally bored, and the audience member, the parent, might say, "I think you're fed up," Are you annoyed?" And it's like, no, but you're on the right trajectory. So you have to change something to make it go on the right path or the path that you're intending. 

And so they slumped on the floor, or they looked at the clock, and automatically the parent went, "You're bored." And it's like, okay, 'cause we recognise a little look at the clock of how long is this gonna go on for, my understanding has shifted out of annoyance into, okay, you're bored. 

Molly: Yeah, and I, it's also about making sure that you don't just stick to one thing the whole time. So the other thing that Charlie says is, i- in the American reference, it's applesauce versus kebab. I think I would have to adjust it for a UK [00:46:00] understanding to say custard versus a barbecue kebab. 

So the custard is just one sloppy thing, right? Whereas the kebab is on a stick, and it's layers of stuff. So you have a pepper, you have an onion, you might have a courgette, and then you might have your piece of meat or your tofu. So you've got these colorful, separate layers. If you sing an entire song with just, like, one general wash of an emotion, then we haven't necessarily gone anywhere or learned anything, and who you were at the beginning is still who you are at the end. 

But if you build those layers, those pieces of the kebab, then you have taken us somewhere, and it can be really exciting. A lot of singers, especially, young singers who just really, really wanna belt, they often struggle with dynamic phrasing, with variety of, the spectrum of quiet versus loud. They're often kind of going to the top of [00:47:00] their volume immediately, and either they get fatigued or it just gets a bit, it's not really exciting to hear. So- we need to also find how do we work on those quieter sounds or those medium sounds, and we can either come at it by saying, "Sing this quiet," or we can come at it by saying, like you said, you know, you have to tell a secret to your friend, but you don't want the person next to you to hear. You want them to hear, but you don't want the next person to hear. So then you're gonna sing it in a whisper, but it still has energy. So again, it's getting creative with that, description and approach. But then mapping, again, mapping it out in the songs that you can repeat it, and it's part of your practice as well. 

Alexa: When we were on our trip to and from Manchester, you kindly driving and escorting me everywhere. 

Molly: Yes, because I made a lot of wrong turns, so it literally was everywhere.  

Alexa: Yes, we have seen parts of Reading that we- You  

Molly: ...never wanna see again. 

Alexa: But we [00:48:00] were talking about the other ways that we can allow anger to come through, other than, like, hard glottalising and voluminous sound. And one of those that you said was you can use the consonants to your advantage. 

Molly: Yeah, I feel like I'm, I'm, like, a consonant peddler. Like, all about consonants. I- it comes up all the time. I find that it's a really, really great, like- hidden secret that a lot of singers don't consider, we always think of the vowels. We want, we want those big open sounds. We're always fixated on how our voice is sounding on the open shapes, but the consonants can often be this really exciting tool that can, A, often solve the problem of the open sounds that we're having, but, B, like you said, create a lot of energy and excitement without fatiguing the singer and pushing into just loud.[00:49:00]  

So I will often talk about the consonants with even my young students, like my, my, you know, the kids I teach starting at age six, that especially if I want them to sing quietly, oftentimes what happens when they sing quietly is I don't want them to whisper because then we're not making a sound. And then sometimes if we sing quietly, we lose our energy, our energy disappears, 'cause again, we're thinking about our vowels. 

So for example, typical children's song, Castle on a Cloud, right? There is a castle on a cloud. Lots of open sounds, and we have this sweet child, but it can potentially get a little bit boring. So what if we told the singer to emphasise their consonants so we have th, c, s, n, cl, d, and not just the ends of word, the, not just the beginning of the words, but the ends. 

So we're still singing [00:50:00] quietly, but we're gonna put a little more energy into: There is a castle on a cloud. 

And that can often, like, wake up the listener. You go, "Oh, this seems like it's important." And it can also sometimes solve the problem of a long phrase when you sing all the way through your consonants. And you were even talking about singing angry. Sometimes focusing on the consonants versus the vowels can really help with that. 

It's sort of like when you're angry, but you don't, you're just gonna be angry through your teeth like a parent in public, which I have often experienced. Like, I'm pretty annoyed with you right now, so I am going to emphasise all of my consonants so you know I am angry, right? I'm not loud. I'm not shouting. 

Alexa: And you've still got the energy bubbling, haven't you? Because if you take something like, You Don't Know This Man from Parade, so having a little jab at those, You Don't Know This Man, with the suh and the mu and the [00:51:00] yu, you're coming back off the volume, but you don't have to come back off of the intensity. Then we kinda gotta separate intensity and volume, I think.  

Molly: Yeah, absolutely, especially the vibrated consonants. So you have your mm, nn, vv, zz, bb. Those can really give you a lot of strong emphasis, and like you said, the difference between intensity and volume, really important. 

So that can be another great tool for acting that, again, is kind of outside in, right? You're not saying sing angry. You're saying you're going to emphasise your consonants, and just the act of having to do that can create an emotion.  

Alexa: We've touched upon gestures like scrunching the fists and the shoulders and maybe jumping up and down. 

What about the face? Because sometimes I feel singers, and actually I've experienced this [00:52:00] myself, is that I think it's coming through on my face, but upon watching back, it really isn't. And so I've had to work a little bit on how then I use my face a little bit in these emotive deliverances. 

How can we do that? Is it literally the same, but just using gesture on your face, like scrunching and pouting?  

Molly: It very much can be, and I think this is a really important element, especially when you have neurodiverse students, but really, really for a lot of people, like you said, y- so many of us don't really have an awareness of the articulations of our face. 

It is particular in neurodivergent students because they struggle with proprioception, so really sensing where their body is in space, so, like, finding balance or coordinating their muscles, and that can still also be related to facial expressions. For example, I have a child who goes, "I can roll my eyes," and so they do an [00:53:00] eye roll. And then another child who is on the spectrum goes, "Am I doing it? Am I doing it?" And they, they can't roll their eyes. 

So a really great tool for that, and like I said, for other students as well, is using a mirror. This is why we have mirrors in studios, but we do not often use them to our advantage. And I find this to be the case when even I'm trying to get certain shapes of the jaw and the mouth for, like, vowel production, is I will say, "Drop your jaw, wider space," and they don't change anything. 

And I go, "Okay. Go do it in the mirror." And they go, "Oh, I didn't, didn't even open my mouth." And you're like, "Yeah." So that's the mirror is a really, really good tool for that, and I think especially for neurodivergent students so that they can actually see it, so they get some feedback because they can't often have that internal feedback. 

And again, it comes back to play. I am the person who is like, I'm like a clown, so my facial [00:54:00] expressions are, like, really exaggerated and too big. I'm like, I think I'm, like, part cartoon. So I'll have to use the mirror and go, "Whoa, you need to pull it back with that facial expression." But it's really, really useful, and that is actually something that we did in our SAVI class, is we literally started with focus shifts, so just moving your eyes. 

And he we would use, like, a ding sound so that you'd get your cue, and it would just be, like, just moving your eyes, looking left, looking forward, looking right. And then we would add to that. Now you're gonna look with your eyes, and then you're gonna move your head, and then you're gonna look with your eyes and then move your head. 

And then on top of that, that was the one, two, and then the one, two, three would be the eyes, the head, and the gesture And that's kind of like when you hear something, you might go, "Oh, I'm gonna see that. What is it? It's over there. I'm gonna go find out what it is." So those impulses, those, building those impulses. 

And again, it feels very mechanical, but especially for [00:55:00] students who really maybe don't have that awareness, breaking it down mechanically like that can be really helpful for them. And again, it feels like they have something to hold on to. And practicing in the mirror is so important for that because we just often don't have the awareness yet. 

Eventually you might once you practice, but to use the mirror to say, "Oh, okay, so actually I can do that with my eye, and then it kind of feels like that. Okay, can I do it again without the mirror?" That's a really useful tool.  

Alexa: Yeah. And a- along with that, I think Dr. Shannon Coates talks about having the, the singer actually feel their face when it's in that position of a smile or a frown, and just actually having a little bit more of a direct contact with what those shapes are. 

Molly: Yeah, that can be an option. Although again, we do have to be, just aware that some, some students don't like touching their face. I especially have a lot of teenage students who maybe struggle with acne, and [00:56:00] their dermatologists have maybe told them not to touch their face, and I did have a student who I did ask her to do that, and she really felt uncomfortable. She didn't wanna do it. But that, you know, that is a case by case thing, and again, that's our job to kind of sense what this student, what, what will be useful for them. But yes, I do think that sometimes, you know, doing the facial expression then feeling it with your hands if, if they're happy to do that is, is also really useful. 

Alexa: To be fair, sometimes when I'm guiding self-massage in class, and I know I'm gonna have to do an example, I'm like, "But I've put my foundation on."  

Molly: Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of young people don't like that, when you're like, "Okay, you're gonna make your cheeks like it's Play-Doh," and they're like, "But my contour and  

Alexa: yeah, maybe not if I've spent, you know, £50 on a foundation. I ain't - Yeah ... rubbing it off for no one.  

Molly: Exactly. Not today. Yeah.  

Alexa: Oh, Molly, it's been so lovely to chat to you about this, and everybody must go and listen to our previous episode, which is all about [00:57:00] understanding the context. 

Molly, you are a history queen, and, uh, we thank you so much for bringing SAVI to our awareness.  

Molly: Oh, thank you. And Charlie will be thrilled if he starts to have a bunch of requests for copies of his book or his cards. I'll have to give him a little heads-up that something might be coming, but yeah. Thank you very much. 

I'm happy to talk about it.  

Alexa: Chat to you soon, Molly.  

Molly: Yeah, bye.