In an audition situation, strain in your facial muscles is a dead giveaway of struggle. No matter how intense the emotions of your piece, your job is still to make what you are doing look easy. If we see you exhibiting tension patterns that have more to do with you and less with the character, we will be taken out of the scene and will begin to worry for you. Therefore, before you go into the room, you must think like an athlete; much as an Olympian would do a specific set of drills to be ready for peak performance, actors need to have a protocol for reducing facial tension. In this article, I’ll be addressing one of the most common areas of gripping—the jaw.
The jaw is one of the most important joints in the body; along with your arms and legs, the jaw (temporomandibular joint, or TMJ) should be thought of as an appendage that hangs from your core skeleton (head/neck/spine). Since it’s one of the main connection points to this central body axis, it’s an exceptionally easy area to hold tension. This also means that freeing your jaw can have great benefits for your whole system, as well as for your performance ability.
Many of us have heard of TMJ disorder. This is a tension pattern of the jaw muscles that usually involves grinding/clenching of the teeth. With TMJ disorder, you may experience pain in the jaw, a locking of the mandible in a certain position, clicking or popping sounds when you open or close your mouth, and/or difficulty chewing. There is a very simple test to tell if TMJ disorder is affecting you—click this link to test yourself. If your TMJ test indicates that your jaw tension is a problem, you should do some jaw stretches regularly. If you click here, you can learn two stretches that are very helpful in rehabilitating the TMJ joint. When doing these stretches there are three rules to keep in mind:
1. Never move into pain. It should feel like a stretch but it should never hurt. If it’s painful, decrease the range of motion and decrease the speed of the stretch.
2. Stand tall. As you stretch your jaw, you want to think of your whole spine lengthening and broadening.
3. Breathe. There is nothing better than a slow and calm breath to help a stretch be more effective and restorative.
Before your next audition, perform these stretches and see how you feel in the room. If your stretches are going well, try this simple exercise: Slowly move your jaw up and down, side to side, and front to back. Take your time with this (five-to-10 seconds per move), and notice where your jaw is tight. A jaw that is truly free should be able to move cleanly and evenly in those three planes. Do this on your own, or to learn more and make sure you are doing these forms correctly, click here.
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