Voice and the Actor Paperback / softback - 1991
by Berry, Cicely (Central School of Speech and Drama; Royal Albert Hall, London)
- New
- Paperback
Voice and the Actor covers everything actors need to know about controlling the voice, their most important instrument. It includes detailed, clear exercises and explanations on developing a natural stage voice, breathing, enunciation, and pitch and timbre, with special advice on difficult delivery problems.
Description
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Details
- Title Voice and the Actor
- Author Berry, Cicely (Central School of Speech and Drama; Royal Albert Hall, London)
- Binding Paperback / softback
- Edition [ Edition: Repri
- Condition New
- Pages 160
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Wiley, New York
- Date 1991-09-03
- Illustrated Yes
- Features Illustrated
- Bookseller's Inventory # ria9780020415558_inp
- ISBN 9780020415558 / 0020415559
- Weight 0.48 lbs (0.22 kg)
- Dimensions 8.15 x 5.65 x 0.43 in (20.70 x 14.35 x 1.09 cm)
- Library of Congress subjects Voice culture - Exercises
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 91009548
- Dewey Decimal Code 808.5
From the rear cover
"Speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life."
Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instinct 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 the whole: an expression of inner life.... After a voice session with her I have known actors speak not of the voice but of 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.
--from Peter Brook's foreword to Voice and the Actor
Cover design by Richard Rossiter
