Sweat Suit

Usually, I like to wear a blouse and a skirt or a one-piece dress. However, if you see me on the Purdue campus every Monday or Wednesday morning, I wear a sweat suit like the picture. Why? Because I have the "Voice for the Actor" class!! In the class, the instructor, Stacie, requires us to wear workout type clothes. We are supposed to stretch and exercise to make proper voice for actors!!

Last Wednesday, we did some exercises for the first time. We lay down on the mat closing our eyes. Stacie turned the light off, and started to give us instructions.
"Put your hands on your stomach. Feel your breath." In the dim studio, we recognized our breathing from the sound and the feeling of our hands.
"A good speaker is a good listener. Listen to the sounds around you carefully..." Stacie said gently. But, there was NO SOUND without our breathing in the quiet studio!! Then, my stomach started to growl, and I heard one boy was snoring!!
I'm not kidding!!!

Anyway, we made many poses. Following Stacie's instructions, we did a child pose from Yoga..We huddled, but stretched our arms. A banana pose? We leaned back as if we could touch our legs from the back.
Making all poses to recognize our abdominal breathing. If you do the "thoracic respiration( breathe from your chest)," you would run out of breath soon. Also, you would push your vocal cords. For actors, singers, emcees, announcers... everyone who uses his vocal cords has to breathe from his abdomen.
This is a very basic exsercise for voice, but it's very important!!
However, what we learned most today was: we should have breakfast and enough sleep before the class...

I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on the next class!!
So, what will I do after the class with this cute sweat suit? I know? Let's go to a GOLF RANGE!!!