Angelica Cathariou: The Brecht – Weill Music Theatre Print

The  Voice  is  one  of  the  actor’s  most  important  instruments  of  communication  and  creative expression. Therefore, the vocal process, which leads to learning how to speak and sing on-stage with clarity and power and enables one to act with great ease, forms a significant and inseparable part of the actor’s training.
There is no such thing as a ‘correct’ voice. There are only – according to Peter Brook in his Foreword to Cisely Berry’s ‘Voice and the actor’ – a million wrong ways: ‘wrong uses of the voice are those that constrict activity, blunt expression, level out idiosyncrasy, generalize experience, coarsen intimacy…’ (Berry, 1973: 1).
It is not the aim of the present article to investigate the primary technical areas that the actor  must  master  or  to  analyze  in  detail  the  work  that  needs  to  be  done  concerning  the various  aspects  of  vocal  technique  required  to  form  a  solid  foundation  for  good  acting.
Luckily,  there  is  a  quite  extended  and  interesting  bibliography  that  deals  with  the  above mentioned issues and covers all the key components of voice work.

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