~ Health and Safety ~

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Warm Ups

Warm ups are important so that we don't harm ourselves during rehearsals or performances. We also do physical warm ups to prevent us from pulling a muscle. For example, we stretch our arms and legs and warm up our facial muscles by lightly tapping all over our faces, and massaging our jaws to release tension.

An example of a vocal warm up would be the following. Warming up our voices by doing exercises where we hum and pretend to chew gum. Tongue twisters, such as 'she sells sea shells on the sea shore' and 'the lips the teeth the tip of the tongue'. This helps articulation, dictation and overall clarity when speaking onstage. Work on projection by choosing a line from the play and saying it across the space as if a hill were in the way.

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Health and Safety Risk Assessment

 College Theatre

 The wings backstage are very small, and have thigs like a ladder, desk and boxes to bump into in the dark of backstage so you have to be careful. In some places there are wires on the floor as well.

Shaw Theatre

At the Shaw Theatre the curtains for the wings are very long and some of it trails on the floor, making walking offstage (especially in darkness) risky as you could trip or slip. Some of them have white tape but it isn't always visible. The corridor where you move between backstage left and backstage right has tables and chairs so having to change sides quickly can be difficult. 


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