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.
Tuesday 5th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 12th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 19th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 26th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 2nd June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 9th June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)
Music Theory Fundamentals for Voice Pedagogues
Dr David Cane
Voice pedagogy has advanced significantly in the last decades in relation to knowledge of the vocal apparatus (anatomy and mechanics), acoustics, and performance psychology (to name just a few subfields) – this is a wonderful thing! Nonetheless, musicianship and the foundations of music theory are still relevant to the teaching and coaching of singers and this course aims to empower voice teachers and coaches with skills to support the fundamental musicianship development of their students.
Tuesday 19th May 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Staging A Coup: History meets science for the coup de la glotte!
Kourtney Austin
Historical vocal pedagogy, voice science, voice health, and performance practice come together in this presentation from Kourtney Austin! The session addresses the historical context for teaching the onset as a fundamental skill, along with a review of a recent publication examining the acoustic effects of different types of onset, and practical studio implementation of onset training. The aforementioned publication is the first known research to objectively measure the acoustic implications of the coup de la glotte, and delineate it from the hard glottal attack.
Thursday 21st May 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Letting the Text Live: Reading Aloud with Expression!
Louisa Morgan
This 2-hour interactive session is designed to help you make more deliberate, expressive choices in your speaking of the written word. It will involve plenty of practical exploration and will cover tips and techniques for working with the voice to lift the text off the page. Work with me to refine nuance, precision, and expressive range. We’ll explore a variety of text samples to cover a wide range of real-world situations, so you can get a feel for the different styles and approaches. If you want your spoken text to sound purposeful, engaging, and unmistakably yours, this session will invite you to play with some tools to do just that.