Voice: the Practitioners, their Practices, and their Critics

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.

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