Speaker 1: Whenever I see a musical theater show, I always wonder
Speaker 1: what the performers do during the day to look after themselves.
Speaker 1: Musical theater can be so demanding on the voice and
Speaker 1: the body, and you're often doing the same show eight
Speaker 1: times a week. Thankfully, when I spoke to Josh Pitterman,
Speaker 1: who is currently playing Phantom in Phantom of the Opera,
Speaker 1: here you let me in on his secrets. Josh knows
Speaker 1: there's no shortcutting recovery. Unlike everything else, his approach to
Speaker 1: rest is both holistic and spiritual, and when it comes
Speaker 1: to recovery, the trick is actually what not to do.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Ramantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Invent Him, and
Speaker 1: this is how I work a show about how to
Speaker 1: help you do your best work. On today's My Favorite
Speaker 1: Tip episode, we go back to an interview from the
Speaker 1: past and I pick out my favorite hip from the interview.
Speaker 1: In today's show, I speak with Josh Pittman about his
Speaker 1: health rituals, starting with how he thinks about the health
Speaker 1: of his voice.
Speaker 2: As you can tell, quite a spiritual thinker, and I
Speaker 2: see things and maybe some unusual ways. But I do
Speaker 2: look at vocal health under the sort of pillars of physical, emotional, mental, spiritual,
Speaker 2: soulful health, because when one is out of whack, it
Speaker 2: does affect your voice. You know, if your emotional health
Speaker 2: is not right, it's going to affect your voice. If
Speaker 2: your physical health is not in a good place, it
Speaker 2: does affect your voice. If your nutrition is not great,
Speaker 2: you know, it can affect your voice. You know, acid
Speaker 2: reflux and all of that affect your voice. So it's
Speaker 2: multiple things, but on a basic sort of level. Rest
Speaker 2: So when I finish, let's say, if phantom is always
Speaker 2: a good example, after you know, saying good eighty people
Speaker 2: at stage door, I don't say a word after that
Speaker 2: until midday the next day, or if it's a Matine day,
Speaker 2: maybe eleven am the next day. So just about thirteen
Speaker 2: hours of just silence. And that is really challenging on
Speaker 2: relationships and requires the people who or the person who
Speaker 2: loves me most bloody too, to just be so compassionate
Speaker 2: and understanding and develop a great ability to lip read
Speaker 2: and to have immense patience. So I am ever grateful
Speaker 2: for how she cares and loves me in that way,
Speaker 2: and hydration. I think I'd end up drinking on a show,
Speaker 2: like four to five liters of order a day, Like
Speaker 2: it's just so much hydration. And steam. Is one thing
Speaker 2: that I'll do after a show when I get back
Speaker 2: home is just I have a little little steamer, little
Speaker 2: steamy pot and steam my voice because steam actually can
Speaker 2: It's like an anti and flam for the cords. And
Speaker 2: water can't get into the chords cords, although it will
Speaker 2: naturally hydrate over a period of time, but steam sort
Speaker 2: of directly gets the courts. So yeah, rest water steam.
Speaker 2: But then yeah, like not eating late at night. It
Speaker 2: really is one of the hardest ones that are all
Speaker 2: people in the h show a week world struggle with
Speaker 2: because you get home and your bloody starving. But if
Speaker 2: you eat too much, you eat the wrong things. You know,
Speaker 2: you end up like having acid reflux during the night,
Speaker 2: and then that is actually burning your cords. So things like,
Speaker 2: you know, little things I've learned over the years that
Speaker 2: might seem a bit o c dish but certainly helped.
Speaker 2: Is like having my bed on a bit of a raise.
Speaker 2: I put a few books under the head of my bed,
Speaker 2: like the you know, on the feet of my bed
Speaker 2: the head so that there's a slight slant just in case.
Speaker 2: You know, I do have a bit of acid reflux,
Speaker 2: you know if that because I've suffered from That's why
Speaker 2: I keep bringing it up. And I didn't know I
Speaker 2: was suffering. It was like silent reflex, and I was like,
Speaker 2: why am I losing my voice this week? What the
Speaker 2: hell is going on? And I'd go went to the
Speaker 2: e NT and they did a scope and they're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: nothing on your cords or anything, but do you think
Speaker 2: it could be acid reflux? And then I went on
Speaker 2: a course of some you know, nexium and some gaveskan
Speaker 2: and hippit parade. Three days later, my voice is back working.
Speaker 2: So I knowed that's like a that's a thing for me,
Speaker 2: so and I know it is a thing for some
Speaker 2: other musical theater performers and singers in general. And stress
Speaker 2: can evoke that. So it's going, Okay, well what am
Speaker 2: I doing around my mental emotional, spiritual health to look
Speaker 2: after my stress? You know? Am I too? Stress? And
Speaker 2: that's what's bringing up So that's why I say it's
Speaker 2: there's so many elements to it, and you're just got
Speaker 2: to give yourself love and all the right places.
Speaker 3: What is some like sneaky like tips and hacks that
Speaker 3: only people in the biz would know about, Like if
Speaker 3: you feel like you're losing your voice, because I've been
Speaker 3: in this situation.
Speaker 4: I went through a few years where I would get
Speaker 4: laryngitis for a few days, maybe a couple of times
Speaker 4: a year that would you know, follow like a mild cold,
Speaker 4: and you know, I'd be booked for, you know, a
Speaker 4: keynote or a media interview and I'd you know, almost
Speaker 4: have no voice. And I felt like I'd spent so
Speaker 4: long on Google going what do I do? So, Josh,
Speaker 4: what what can people do if they're losing their voice?
Speaker 2: When they're losing their voice, Well, if you're losing your voice,
Speaker 2: rest number one. Rest if you have an opportunity to rest,
Speaker 2: don't speak. Just hello, darker, smiled friends, sounder, silence people.
Speaker 2: That's number one, because that's the only way you can
Speaker 2: really recover is to rest. And we've got to understand
Speaker 2: that all the things I talked about, steam hydration, you know,
Speaker 2: people say the things to avoid I think is more important.
Speaker 2: People go, oh, I have a strepsaul or I have
Speaker 2: a you know, a menthol or like that, don't don't
Speaker 2: go near that stuff. That's like that's the antigo to recovery.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's you don't want to touch that. Manuka
Speaker 2: honey can be really good because it's got a lot
Speaker 2: of healing properties, but you want to get a really
Speaker 2: high quality one. Look. In really desperate times, I've had
Speaker 2: to take pregnant alone, which is a cortizone, just to
Speaker 2: get through on a on like a corporate one off
Speaker 2: gig that I couldn't get out of and was having trouble.
Speaker 2: But ultimately, I know most of I'm really open and
Speaker 2: honest about this. Most of the time when I've had
Speaker 2: laryng ivers, it's because I'm under stress and I'm not
Speaker 2: dealing with that stress well, or because I'm there's something
Speaker 2: in my life that I am not voicing or I
Speaker 2: don't feel like I'm being heard on. And so there's
Speaker 2: that more once again spiritual component to it that comes
Speaker 2: into play, certainly for me, and it took me a
Speaker 2: decade to work that out.
Speaker 4: If you are looking for more tips to improve the
Speaker 4: way you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that
Speaker 4: contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me
Speaker 4: Work Better, which range from interesting research finding three to
Speaker 4: gadgets and software that I'm loving. You can sign up
Speaker 4: for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how I Work
Speaker 4: dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventium with
Speaker 4: production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to
Speaker 4: Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode
Speaker 4: and makes everything sound so much better than it would
Speaker 4: have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.