Twisting your tongue into tangles
A little something for the actors in the group or teachers or anyone who has to do any public speaking.
Any time you have to get up in front of people and talk, it is a good idea to wake up your tongue. A little “Peter Piper,” a little “woodchuck chucking wood” in advance and your performance will be better.
(I saw Rachel Maddow the other day. I love Rachel Maddow–but on this particular day, she’d skipped the warm-up, I think.)
Avoid the stumbles and fumbles. Try a few tongue twisters. Say each one 3 times fast, and you’ll be ready for anything.
Alice asks for axes
Bad black bran bread
Betty Bocker bought some butter, but she said “This butter’s bitter!
If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter!”
So she bought some better butter and she put it in her batter
And it made her bitter batter better.
The big black bug bit the big black bear and the big black bear bled blood
Bluebeard’s blue bluebird
Bland Bea Blinks Back
Cinnamon Aluminium Linoleum
Cheap sheep soup
Friendly fleas and huffy fruitflies
A fat-free fruit float
Greek grapes
Gig-whip
The hare’s ear heard ere the hair heeded
Ike ships ice chips in ice chips ships
June sheep sleep soundly
Keenity cleaning copper kettles
Lemon lime liniment
Much mashed mushrooms
Norse myths
Nine nice night nymphs
Awful old ollie oils oily autos
Under the mother otter uttered the other otter
A pack of pesky pixies
Poor pure Pierre
The queen coined quick clipped quips
Red leather yellow leather
Rigid rugged rubber baby buggy bumpers
Round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascals ran their rural races
Strange strategic statistics
The sea ceaseth seething
Six sick shorn sheep
The sixth Sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick
Such a shapeless sash
The swan swam over the swell, swim swan swim
The swan swam back again, well swum swan
A ghost’s sheets would soon shrink in such suds
Thrash the thickset thug
Three free through trains
Tea for the thin twin tinsmith
What a to do to die today, at a minute or two to two.
A distinctly difficult thing to say, but harder still to do.
For they’ll beat a tattoo at twenty to two
With a rat-a-tattoo at two
And the dragon will come when he hears the drum
At a minute or two to two today, at a minute or two to two.
You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York
Valuable valley villas
Real wristwatch straps
War weary warriors
Ex disk jockey
Local yokel jokes
Zithers slither slowly south
Trip over your tongue a lot? I bet, if you did, you laughed–and that’s another benefit. Laughter wakes up your diaphragm. Your voice will have more support.
There you go. All warmed up now? Knock ’em dead.
Most of these came from my work with the American Globe Theatre and Pulse Ensemble Theatre–but I’ve checked, and they all seem to be widely available elsewhere on the ‘net, so feel free to use and share.
