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