Speech for the Stage

From its original publication, thousands of actors have used this classic text to develop and refine their voice and speech. Evangeline Machlin includes warm-up routines for the voice but initially focuses on the importance of listening. She also discusses such important elements as relaxation, phonetics, articulation, resonance, pitch, rate of speech and stress. In addition, there are chapters on dialects, on reading aloud, sight reading, auditioning and performance.

Since the original publication of this classic text, thousands of actors have used it to develop and refine their voice and speech. At the beginning and end of this book are warm-up routines, such as setting-up exercises, to bring the voice to its best functioning level, but the training starts with listening. Machlin describes acoustics and the way the body functions to produce hearing and speech. She discusses helpful equipment and then proceeds, always with exercises which can be done under the direction of a teacher or alone, to deal with such important elements as relaxation, phonetics, articulation, resonance, pitch, rate of speech, and stress. In addition, there are chapters on such specialized problems as speech in Shakespeare and the use of dialects, on reading aloud, sight reading, auditioning and actual performance. The poetry provided for the exercises supplies practice material similar to today's theatre speech, in its vivid, colloquial, personal style.

Evangeline Machlin trained such actors as Steve McQueen, Lee Grant, Suzanne Pleshette, Joanne Woodward and Faye Dunaway. Dr. Machlin was formerly Director of Speech studies at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and Lecturer in Speech at Columbia University.