Margi Sharp Douglas, shown here performing in in Magis Theatre Company’s production of “Great Divorce,” is also owner of Pilates Garage in Brooklyn, New York. Below she details how she was able to incorporate a vocal warmup in her Pilates work.

As a professional actor and Pilates instructor, over the last couple of years I have worked to integrate Pilates technique into a voice and body warm up for the stage.  Working with fellow Columbia MFA acting graduates, along with some adjustments given by Alexander teachers and less traditional Pilates masters in New York, I developed a “Voice and Pilates” series that has become a staple of Magis Theatre Company’s weekly actor training in NYC.

The goal of the workshop is to create core awareness and strength for the actor in movement, while maintaining an open throat, spontaneous breath and a resonant sound to stay safely and vocally connected, in even the most physically challenging role.

Recently, I teamed up with master Pilates teacher Joan Murray, who had been instructing singers in the Opera Masters Program at Julliard. She discovered that she could help them most by first freeing the musculature of the head, neck and shoulders. Then, she worked with them to strengthen all the core stabilizers in an isometric way, so as to prevent the abdominals from being too short to allow the diaphragm to expand. Her results helped one singer become a Metropolitan Opera Competition finalist in 2007.

We found our goals were very similar and we began doing workshops for singers and actors or anyone who wanted to do Pilates with less tension in the head and neck and walk out with a more open, free sound in their voices.