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Voice: the Practitioners, their Practices, and their Critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Jane Boston
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Abstract

In NTQ47 (August 1996), Sarah Werner argued that contemporary voice training did not provide a neutral set of tools to help actors perform classical texts, and that it was needful to reveal the cultural biases and underlying ideology of voice work in order to clarify a feminist understanding of acting and speaking Shakespeare. The three leading voice practitioners who came under Ms Werner's fire – Cicely Berry, Kristin Linklater, and Patsy Rodenburg – mounted a sturdy defence of their methods in NTQ49 (February 1997), to which Sarah Werner responded in the following issue. Now Jane Boston takes a fresh view of all sides in the argument, putting these into a broader historical context which embraces the culture of our own times as much as of Shakespeare's, and calls for an understanding and reconciliation of mutual misconceptions between the academy and the conservatoire. Jane Boston was a founding member of the feminist Siren Theatre in the ‘eighties, and has subsequently taught at the National Youth Theatre, the Poor School, and at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where she was Head of Voice for the BA in Acting, which she helped to create. She now combines a pedagogical and practical role at Central as supervisor and trainer on the Postgraduate Diploma in Voice Studies, and has recently presented papers on acting and stress at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 51 , August 1997 , pp. 248 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes and References

1. Werner, Sarah, ‘Performing Shakespeare: Voice Training and the Feminist Actor’, New Theatre Quarterly, XII, No. 47 (08 1996), p. 249–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Connor, Steve, ‘Female Tones and Timbres’, Women: a Cultural Review, VII, No. 3 (Winter 1996), p. 310Google Scholar.

3. Ibid., p. 311.

4. Melrose, Susan, A Semiotics of the Dramatic Text (London: Macmillan, 1994), p. 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Ibid., p. 4.

6. Linklater, Kristin, Freeing the Natural Voice (New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1976), p. 4Google Scholar.

7. Berry, Cicely, Rodenburg, Patsy, Linklater, Kristin, ‘Shakespeare, Feminism and Voice: Responses to Sarah Werner’, New Theatre Quarterly, XIII, No. 49 (02 1997), p. 48–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Cicely Berry, ibid., p. 48.

9. See Roszak, Theodore, The Making of a Counter Culture (New York: Doubleday, 1968), p. xiiGoogle Scholar.

10. Brook, Peter, Preface to Voice and the Actor, (London: Harrap, 1973), p. 3Google Scholar.

11. Roszak, op. cit., p. xiii.

12. Rodenburg, New Theatre Quarterly, op. cit., p. 50.

13. Werner, op. cit., p. 250.

14. Melrose, op. cit., p. 10.

15. Hart, Lynda and Phelan, Peggy, eds., Acting Out: Feminist Performances (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), especially Phelan, ‘Reciting the Citation of Others; or A Second Introduction’, p. 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Melrose, op. cit., p. 205

17. Phelan, op. cit., p. 15.

18. Steinberg, Deborah Lynn, ‘Cultural Regimes of the Body: an Introduction’, in Women: a Cultural Review, VII, No. 3 (Winter 1996), p. 226Google Scholar.

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20. Werner, op. cit., p. 250.

21. Linklater, New Theatre Quarterly, op. cit., p. 52.

22. Ibid.

23. Moore, Sonia, Stanislavski Revealed (New York: Applause Books, 1991), p. 14Google Scholar.

24. Ibid, p. 16.

25. Werner, op. cit., p. 252.

26. Ibid.

27. Rodenburg, New Theatre Quarterly, op. cit., p. 50.

28. Werner, op. cit., p. 252.

29. Ibid.

30. Helms, Lorraine, ‘Acts of Resistance: the Feminist Player’, in Callaghan, Dympna, Helms, Lorraine, and Singh, Dyotsna, The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)Google Scholar.

31. Werner, op. cit.

32. Melrose, op. cit., p. 205.

33. Werner, op. cit., p. 257.

34. Rushkoff, Douglas, The Guardian, 10 04 1997Google Scholar.

35. Espiner, Mark, The Guardian, ‘Online’ section, 10 04 1997Google Scholar.