Voice and the Actor

CICELY BERRY

Copyright © 1973 by Cicely Berry

ISBN 0-02-041555-9

Foreword by Peter Brook

Exercises are very much in fashion in the theatre: in fact, for some groups they have become a way of life. Yet we have a healthy instinct that rebels against the thought of exercises: in some parts of the world, people still sing for the joy of singing, dance for the joy of dancing, doing neither physical nor vocal training, while their muscles and vocal cords unerringly perform whatever is expected of them. Are exercises then really necessary? Would it not be enough to trust nature and act by instinct?

Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instincts have been crippled from birth by many processes — by the conditioning, in fact, of a warped society. So an actor needs precise exercise and clear understanding to liberate his hidden possibilities and to learn the hard task of being true to 'the instinct of the moment'.

As her book points out with remarkable persuasiveness 'technique' as such is a myth, for there is no such thing as a correct voice. There is no right way — there are only a million wrong ways, which are wrong because they deny what would otherwise be affirmed. Wrong uses of the voice are those that constipate feeling, constrict activity, blunt expression, level out idiosyncrasy, generalize experience, coarsen intimacy. These blockages are multiple and are the results of acquired habits that have become part of the automatic vocal equipment; unnoticed and unknown, they stand between the actor's voice as it is and as it could be and they will not vanish by themselves. So the work is not how to do but how to permit: how, in fact, to set the voice free. And since life in the voice springs from emotion, drab and uninspiring technical exercises can never be sufficient. Cicely Berry never departs from the fundamental recognition that speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life. She insists on poetry because good verse strikes echoes in the speaker that awaken portions of his deep experience which are seldom evoked in everyday speech. After a voice session with her I have known actors speak not of the voice but of a growth in human relationships. This is a high tribute to work that is the opposite of specialization. Cicely Berry sees the voice teacher as involved in all of a theatre's work. She would never try to separate the sound of words from their living context. For her the two are inseparable. This is what makes her book so necessary and valuable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the following for their kind permission to print the poems and extracts included in this book:

The Trustees of the Hardy Estate, The Macmillan Company of Canada and Macmillan, London and Basingstoke (Copyright 1925 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.), for 'The Going' from Collected Poems, by Thomas Hardy; the Estate of the late Mrs Frieda Lawrence and Laurence Pollinger Ltd, for 'Tortoise Shout' from The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence ed. by Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts, © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and CM. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Reprinted by permission of the Viking Press, Inc.; The Society of Authors, on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate, for an extract from Man and Superman; Edith Sitwell and Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, for 'Scotch Rhapsody' from Collected Poems; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, the Turstees for the copyrights of the late Dylan Thomas and the New Directions Publishing Corporation, for an extract from Under Milk Wood and 'Over Sir John's Hill' from Collected Poems, by Dylan Thomas; Mr. W.B. Yeats, the Macmillan Company of London and Basingstoke and the Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd, for 'Easter 1916' from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1952 by Bertha Géorgie Yeats. Reprinted with permission of Macmillan.

We would also like to thank Philip Sayer, photographer, and Lynn Dearth, actress, for the centre-page photographs.

Contents

Introduction                                                  7

1     Vocal Development                                      11

2     Relaxation and Breathing                             18

3     Muscularity and Word                                  43

4     The Whole Voice                                          76

5     Speaking Poetry                                          101

6     Listening                                                    123

7     Using the Voice                                          130 Summary of Exercises                                137

ILLUSTRATIONS

DIAGRAMS IN TEXT

Resonating spaces                                              10

Possible rib movement                                       21

Good and bad positions on the floor                  23

Bone-prop in the mouth                                    49

Position of tongue and its movement                  53

Palate lowered                                                   55

Position of back of tongue and soft palate         56

PHOTOGRAPHIC PLATES                 Facing pages

Incorrect posture                                               62

Correct posture                                                 62

Free position on the floor                                  63

Tense position of neck and shoulders                 63

Good breathing position                                    78

Demonstrating rib movement                             78

Hands stretched above the head                          19

Hands and head hung down                                79