Ripped and Resonant: Towards a weight-lifting/voice training pedagogy for actors (Sarah Holden-Boyd) (part of doing together 25)

Ripped and Resonant: Towards a weight-lifting/voice training pedagogy for actors8th April 2025This practical workshop aimed to explore interactions between weight-lifting and voice within the context of Anglo-American voice training pedagogies for actors. Historically, weight-lifting has been considered anathema to the performer’s vocal development. Within the context of singing training, this attitude is beginning to shift, and resources aimed at helping the singer lift weights in a ‘voice-friendly’ way are starting to emerge. No such resources, however, currently exist for the actor. This workshop shared techniques developed through extensive solo weight-lifting and voice practice and through workshops with acting students at Bath Spa University. The techniques respond to concerns raised by actor/voice trainers regarding the preservation of vocal health while weight-lifting. These techniques also use weight-lifting and the production of effort as a creative vocal stimulus. Participants were invited to participate in some simple exercises.doing together 25doing together is a yearly two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook Campus, hosted by the Art Research Centre (Bath School of Art, Film and Media) in collaboration with Bath School of Design and the Centre of Cultural and Creative Industries.doing together is a platform to connect staff, students, and the community through making, collaboration and experimentation.Workshops, delivered by staff and PGR students from across the University, share practice-based research methods and a broad range of approaches to practice. doing together is proposed as a generous space to make/do/share and discuss practice with colleagues from a range of different Schools.Throughout the symposium, facilitators – alongside participants – test out ways of doing together in an effort to make their practice-based research explicit, rather than simply describe it.