The voice – its use, production and health – is arguably the single most vital aspect of the actor’s instrument. That the word ‘audience’ is used so commonly is an indicator of the aural and oral signifiers involved in a theatre experience. Hamlet’s advice to the players begins with speech, rather than gesture, in his direction, ‘Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue.’
Vocal coaching has evolved dynamically in the past thirty years. Whereas focus was formerly placed on ‘rib swing’ and the actor’s ability to control breath expenditure over increasingly longer counts, contemporary focus has shifted to freeing the natural voice, adapting everyday breathing patterns to the requirements of performance. While important strides were taken by British voice coaches Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg (of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre respectively) as well as Roy Hart in America, Kristin Linklater’s seminal book, Freeing the Natural Voice (London: Nick Hern Books, 2006) impacted dramatically on British and American vocal training. An underpinning ethos is that voice, breath, thought and word become wholly interconnected, enabling the actor to ‘think on the line’, as if the playwright’s words occurred to the actor in the very moment of speaking. The structure of Shakespeare’s verse harnesses this breath–thought–word–speech unity in its most natural form. The iambic pentameter reflects the number of beats that the heart takes in the cycle of one relaxed inhalation and exhalation of breath (i.e. five). Given the significance of breath in voicework – and the correlation of Shakespeare’s verse to the body’s natural rhythm – it is not uncommon for his texts to form the kernel of vocal training. The changing architecture of performance spaces – from 2,000-seater Greek amphitheatres to the intimacy of a film studio – has demanded versatility in an actor’s connection of voice and thought with volume and diction. Bella Merlin
Image: Odin Teatret Archives. Performance (rehearsal): The Chronic Life. Director: Eugenio Barba. Photo: Jan Rüsz