Performing Pain: Vocal Health in Emotional Roles!
Thursday 19th February 2026, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (London Time)
Thursday 26th February 2026, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (London Time)
What is the link between acted emotion and vocal health in speech and singing?
How connected are acted emotions to our real-life emotions? Are they expressed differently? Do they feel different in the body? The intensity of internalised emotion can be a worry for some performers. In real emotion, sympathetic arousal can increase cardiovascular circulation (the sensation of the heart racing), impact respiration (short, shallow breaths) and increase muscular activity as a preparation to flee, brace, or fight (which can cause pitch to rise, vocal folds to become pressed, and the jaw to become locked). What happens when we experience this while singing or speaking for performance? Are there times when performed emotion can start to present physiologically as real emotion?
This 2-part course looks at the potential impact of acted emotion on vocal health, why we should consider it as voice practitioners, and how to care for our performers needing to work with it.
Who is it for?
This course is for voice practitioners (speech or singing) who work with performers needing to use acted emotion. The focus will primarily surround negative emotion in the acting voice and the musical theatre voice.
Session 1: What happens in the body when we experience real and acted emotion?
We will explore the physiological responses to real life emotion and look at research that has compared this to acted emotion. We will discuss the boundaries between real and acted emotion and discuss how this plays out in our work.
Session 2: How to prepare for it
In the second session we will move to focusing on practical strategies for preparing for emotional work from a vocal health (rather than performative) perspective and how to care for the voice when heightened emotional performance causes difficulties.
🏷️ Price £50 (UK VAT inclusive)
🎥 Recording automatically sent to all who book (even if you cannot attend live)
▶️ Rewatch as many times as you like
📜 Certificate of attendance available
Louisa Morgan
Louisa Morgan is a lecturer, voice teacher and researcher, with a special focus on spoken and sung emotion. Louisa lectures with Voice Study Centre (spoken voice lead). Previously, Louisa taught technical singing for the MA/MFA Musical Theatre students at the Guilford School of Acting (GSA) and Italia Conti, and she was also a spoken and singing voice coach for the Acting students at the Cygnet Training Theatre.
Sorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Monday 28th September 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Tuesday 29th September 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Wednesday 30th September 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Thursday 1st October 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Friday 2nd October 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
(London Time)
Certificate in Executive Voice Coaching and Communication
Louisa Morgan
This five-day course is designed for professional coaches who want to extend their practice into executive coaching, leadership communication, and professional corporate voice work.
Friday 2nd October 2026
12:30 PM - 2:30 PM
(London Time)
Muscle Tension Dysphonia in the Singing Voice!
Dr Claire Thomas
Join Dr Claire Thomas for a practical 2-hour workshop for singing teachers and voice practitioners! Building upon the previous course to create a practical teacher pathway in order to recognise what is happening, reduce unnecessary effort, transfer coordination into singing, manage load and recovery and know when to refer back. Not one size fits all, but a guide to making informed choices with voice users. Based on a five-year investigative project, the course equips singing teachers with the knowledge and practical tools needed to confidently understand MTD, and support singers experiencing MTD beyond their initial therapeutic input.
Tuesday 6th October 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Inspired Not Bound: The Promise of Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy
Lynn Helding
Lynn Helding defines Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy in her upcoming book Practicing Science-Informed Voice Training as, “A type of hybrid singing voice pedagogy that unites science and art by researching current voice science, translating it, combining it with extant historic voice knowledge, and transmitting it to singers.” Join Lynn Helding as she seeks to understand human behaviour of both sides of the “Science versus Art” debate via research from the fields of cognitive science and behavioural science, focussing particularly on lessons learned due to several societal shifts.