When I was asked if I would like to reply to Sarah Werner's article in the August issue of NTQ entitled ‘Performing Shakespeare: Voice Training and the Feminist Viewpoint’, my first reaction was that it was so unfounded in the reality of practical voice work that it was not worth the time needed to respond. But then, re-reading it, I became incensed at the notion that voice teachers, through the work of freeing the voice, are after some romantic notion of connecting with an idyllic past – a notion so utterly absurd that I spoke with my friends and colleagues, Kristin Linklater and Patsy Rodenburg, and we agreed that Ms. Werner's assumptions must be challenged. As Edgar's words imply in the last speech of King Lear: ‘Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.’ Words hurt, cost, are ugly and violent: but it is my belief that when we reach the point of articulating our dilemmas – it is then that we become free to take action. That is what my work is about. So, to follow are our answers to, and our questions for Ms. Werner.