ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates an exercise that deconstructs the elements that make up speech (vowels and consonants) and restructures it in a way that allows the participants to fully engage in every sound. Verbal expression is when the performer utters decipherable words, and post-verbal (not in the grammatical sense) is used when the spoken word is deconstructed, fragmented, pulled apart, and restructured. Post-verbal is like examining language in extreme detail, so the background comes to life rather than the foreground, looking so deep into words that the logical sense of it dissolves and the “substance” of it – the individual phonemes – becomes clear. One of the many tasks of the actor is interpreting text. They are concerned about the meaning of the text, the delivery of the words and the subtext, but they often ignore the effect of the sounds that make up the words. Sounds move the body literally and figuratively.
