How to SCREAM without killing vocal chords?

I'm not going to deny the excellent advice given above, as I've heard it often enough. But for me personally, it makes virtually no difference for me to consume milk products. To some extent, if I feel my voice might be rough and raw in any way, milk is actually soothing and helps me use my voice better! I reckon about 60% of my performances are in outdoor venues, where strong vocal projection and clarity is a must, and it all depends on good warm ups and vocal technique. Best advice is water. A dry throat is going to cause problems. Anything I've eaten or drunk may effect my production of saliva, which is required for a lubricated throat. Avoid anything that causes you problems. It's different for different types of performance. For a radio voiceover, sometimes having TOO moist a mouth can result in audible tongue clicks over the mic... Alcohol's a bad idea for lots of reasons. It usually dries you out, rather than moistening your throat. It can be sugary, which effects your saliva. It can effect judgement. And it may numb feeling in your throat and tongue. I totally avoid anything like cough-drops that may have a numbing soothing effect...if you can't FEEL the damage to your throat, there's a good chance you are doing even more. You have to feel your voice to be able to use it properly. When I was recovering from laryngitis, a swig of olive oil was something I found really soothing..! For me, a warm up involves RELAXING tension in the throat, neck, jaw, abdomen, and everywhere else in the body. Hold a good posture. Next step is BREATH control...expanding the lungs, controlling the airflow, utilising the diaphragm. Always support the breath with muscular control, but not tension. Warming up my RESONANCE comes next. Humming, yawning, and trying to project sound from all the available resonators: nasal passages and sinuses, head, chest, stomach...not just the mouth and throat. Then increase my RANGE. Humming, yawning, gently testing the lowest to the highest notes, including the smooth transition over the patch where my voice breaks from chest voice into head voice into falsetto. Increase VOLUME for the above. Requires resonance, breath control, projection. Explore different mouth shapes to produce different vowel sounds. ARTICULATION. Lips, tongue, teeth, shape of mouth, precision of delivery. Tongue-twisters. Over-emphasise the endings of words, and all consonants. Phrasing (where you take a breath within the lines). If singing is required, further warm up is required to control PITCH precision. Singing scales, being precise with note intervals, hitting octaves. Try to prepare your body to 'think' each note just before you actually hit the note, particularly when going up the scale (rather than sliding up to find pitch) And finally, if you're performing in a CHARACTER voice, doing whatever is required for that sound. Many of my characters are nothing like my normal speaking voice, and require me to hold extra tension in my throat or nasal passages. If you're speaking or singing in a foreign accent, or voicing an animal, for instance. Wait until you've warmed up in your natural relaxed voice, then push to wherever's necessary. A lot of the time your character's voice will be going through points of crisis...anger, shouting, harsh whispering, forced laughter or screaming, etc. Find out in rehearsal how to achieve this with minimal tension, and also how much you can sustain over the entire performance. There's no point giving your best shout in Act 1 if it then hurts too much to wail in Act 2. Reduce one to achieve the other. Try not to clear your throat. It doesn't actually do a lot of good, it's better to sip water or swallow. And there's nothing worse than hearing throats being cleared from in the wings. In fact, quite often it's better to cough or clear your throat ONSTAGE, so long as it appears natural and doesn't interrupt the rhythm of the piece, rather than offstage where you're distracting everybody. If your voice is sore or tired, DON'T SKIP THE WARM UP, thinking it will 'save' your voice. More than ever you need to warm up, to test your limits and restrictions and know what you're capable of. Be gentle on your voice, but still try to do all the steps above. Think about how you're going to PACE yourself, in order to sustain your performance and your emotional journey. Sometimes you have to maintain your voice for a long time before pushing it. In the show I just finished, I did a warm up just before they let in the house, but then it was still 15min before the show started and another 45min into the act before I appeared, to speak and sing. I had to maintain a warm voice for an hour backstage (where I could be heard) by gently humming during other people's songs and during loud scenes or moments covered by laughter, but keeping quiet during the rest. Being thoroughly prepared before the show meant I was best prepared an hour later. Hope there's something useful in all that. Cheers, Craig ~<8>-/====\---------