Theatre Warm-Up Exercises_Tongue Twisters
Acting Exercises & Warm-Ups (Part 2): Tongue Twisters
Overview
A tongue-twister activity for theatre students.
Acting Exercises & Warm-Ups: Tongue Twisters (Part 2)
Theatre Warm-Up Exercise: Tongue Twisters
OBJECTIVE
Improve your articulation and diction through the use of tongue twisters.
INSTRUCTIONS
Start Slowly: Begin each tongue twister at a slow pace, ensuring that you enunciate each word clearly.
Increase Speed Gradually: Once you are comfortable with the tongue twister, gradually increase your speed while maintaining clear enunciation.
Focus on Precision: Pay attention to not drifting off or dropping the ends of words. Your goal is clarity, even at a faster pace.
Warm-Up with These Tongue Twisters
Very furry frogs are very rare
Budda gudda budda gudda boo
Crispy cookies crumble and they crunch
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Mommy made me mash my M&M's
Princess Pippa picked a purple pig
A noisy noise annoys an oyster
To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life long lock, awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.
Lovely lemon liniment
Twelve twins twirled twelve twigs
Unique New York, Unique New York
I slit a sheet; a sheet I slit, upon the slitted sheet I sit
Humphrey Hunchback had a hundred Hedgehogs, Did Humphrey Hunchback have a hundred Hedgehogs? If Humphrey Hunchback had a hundred Hedgehogs, Where's the hundred Hedgehogs Humphrey Hunchback had?
A proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot
She sells seashells by the seashore
I saw Susie sitting in a shoeshine shop
Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits
Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?
Clean clams crammed in clean cans
Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks
Rudder valve reversals
He threw three free throws
The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us
Amid the mists and coldest frosts With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts He thrusts his fists against the posts And still insists he sees the ghosts
She stood in the doorway of Burgess’s fish store shop inexplicably mimicking him and welcoming him in
CHALLENGE
Use these tongue twisters in conjunction with enunciation exercises to maximize your articulation skills. For more practice, explore tongue twisters on the International Collection of Tongue Twisters website.
adapted from Voice Acting/Tongue Twisters / CC BY-SA; This work is licensed CC BY-SA
Cover image: Theatreland Masks by Garry Knight licensed CC BY 2.0/ *All twisters are in the Public Domain