In an analysis
of the physical components necessary for sound
production - power source, oscillator, resonator
- breath occupies the most active place in human
vocal production: it is the energy impulse that
excites the vibration in the vocal folds and the
resulting resonance in the body - starting,
continuing, and stopping it. Because of the
living and therefore infinitely changeable
quality of the particular actions and structures
that are responsible for this sound vibration,
the way in which the human body breathes impacts
the voice a great deal, much as the hands of a
good pianist and a beginner create different
sounds with the same instrument. Breathing,
then, makes an essential difference in quality
of vocal production. By quality I refer not only
to timbre, but to the entire range of use of the
voice.
Voice is an
action. It has no location in the body except
when it is in action, sounding. The essential
physical structures - diaphragm, intercostal,
abdominal and back muscles; larynx;
articulators; body form and cavities - are in
themselves virtually mute until with a
particular use of the breath and vocal folds
they all inter-relate as power source,
oscillator, and resonator to create sound. It is
for optimal functioning of the breath energy, as
power source, that I have searched.
A singer's voice
work deals largely with the use of the vocal
folds, practicing different pitches, onsets,
durations, trills, and cessations, enjoying the
bird-like flutter sensations at the throat, and
finding, in the added manipulations of the
pharynx, jaw, and articulators, delightful
variations of phoneme and tone, while using the
breath for tone initiation, consistency, pause,
and volume. However, for those without musical
skills or aspirations, the voice is usually
simply a means of direct communication of ideas
or feelings, requiring no conscious effort other
than some acquisition of language skills. Actors
in the theatre are caught between these two
poles. Since the speaking voice is not as
determined by meter, melody, or tone as a
singer's voice, and since an actor's textual
interpretation and given circumstances (real and
imagined) of place, time, action, and person are
constantly varying, the act of speaking is
always somewhat improvisatory, based on impulse,
and essentially immediate. It is a commitment to
the manifest present.
In my thirty
years of work with actors' speaking voices I
have focused on breath as the vital active
ingredient for physical sound-making as well as
for the expression of ideas. "Inspiration"
denotes both the physical act of breathing in,
and the mental act of creating a thought. The
expiration (breathing out) or expression of the
thought is likewise both physical and mental. It
is the harmonizing of these twin aspects of
speaking - the physical needs and impulses and
the mental thought processes - that I address,
and through them the harmonizing of the two
functions of the nervous system in the act of
breathing for speaking: the autonomic (which is
an unconscious response by the diaphragm to a
need for oxygen) and the central (which can
override autonomic respiratory rhythm through
conscious motor control). The diaphragm contains
both unstriated and striated muscle and is
responsive to both the autonomic and central
nervous systems. It is therefore uniquely
appropriate as a site to create such harmony, so
that the healing of the culturally prevalent
body/mind split is not merely a metaphysical,
but is actually a physical and obtainable, goal
which brings impulse and thought together as
action.
In searching for
models beyond my own empirical experience and my
observation of students and actors, the modern
and ancient somatic training systems of
Bioenergetics, yoga, and shiatsu have been most
influential. In experimenting with these
exercises myself and on others I explored means
to most directly affect breathing and vocal
sound, and the adaptations of these systems that
I use with actors have over the years resulted
in a series of exercises and interventions that
I call Destructuring.
The
Destructuring work consists of a deep
exploration into the autonomic nervous system
functions: the spontaneous, organic impulses
which every actor aspires to incorporate into
the acting process. The tendency of the body to
vibrate involuntarily as a healing response to a
perceived stimulus in the autonomic "fight or
flight" mode (as in shivering with cold or fear,
trembling with grief, anger, fatigue, or
excitement) is replicated by applying induced
tremor initially through hyper-extension of the
body's extremities only, thus leaving the torso
muscles free to respond with a heightened
breathing pattern. At the same time a great deal
of unaccustomed energy, waves of tremor, and,
ultimately, relaxation, flow throughout the
body, sensitizing it to vibration, and
increasing feeling and awareness. The
introduction of sound into these positions
allows the ensuing physical freedom to be
reflected in the voice too, not just the body,
because this freedom also naturally affects
resonance and laryngeal use, so that pitch range
and inflectional melody are improved, as are
tone, timing, and rhythm, and even listening and
inter-relating.
Destructuring
affects not only the vocal performance as well
as the daily breathing (and vocal) habits of the
actor, but can also radically alter muscle tone
and body organization, allowing sound vibrations
to extend beyond the conventional resonators of
chest and head throughout the body, adding
harmonic range and natural volume to the voice.
It encourages the breathing (as power source and
therefore timing) and the body (as resonator and
therefore tone) to respond organically to shifts
in mood and idea, thus achieving variety and
complexity of meaning and eliminating
unintentionally dry, flat delivery.
Since the
physical and emotional aspects and the awareness
levels of the actor can be deeply affected by
this work, the resulting growth of the
personality helps create a more mature artist,
with increased potential for both sensitivity
and pro-action. Through self-reflexive contact
with the autonomic nervous system the actor
acquires not only a more functional vocal
instrument but also gains in autonomy,
authenticity, and authority, which impact both
personal and social behavior, as well as
aesthetic choices.
When the
autonomic movements of the "Destructured"
muscles of respiration are less inhibited it
becomes easy to "Restructure" by introducing the
traditional European breathing techniques taught
to actors in London at the Central School of
Speech and Drama by Elsie Fogerty, Gwyneth
Thurburn, J. Clifford Turner, and Cicely Berry.
As a child I studied with Barbara Bunch, Cicely
Berry's teacher, and I was fortunate to have for
three formative years Alison Milne, Thurburn,
Turner, and Berry as my teachers at the Central
School. I returned there to teach before coming
to the United States in 1968. It was the lack of
ability in most of my students in both countries
to isolate, without undue tension, the breathing
actions of the vocally efficient rib swing and
abdominal support that caused me, not to give up
the idea of technique as others have done in
response to the perceived difficulty, but to
look for methods of reducing body tension in
faster and more radical ways than the voice work
or the Alexander Technique which I had
experienced at the Central School, so that the
breathing isolations could become effortless and
therefore economical, limber, and effective. The
rib swing and abdominal support actions are, in
fact, what an uninhibited body does during
speaking.
In 1965 in
London, David Kozubei introduced me to the work
of Dr. Wilhelm Reich. Influenced by Reich,
Kozubei had developed a means of reducing muscle
tension which he called "Movements," and he
founded a group to study Reich's work in a
practical way. In this group I began to study
Bioenergetics with Dr. Alexander Lowen, then
later in the United States with several of his
trainees, and more recently I worked with Dr.
John Pierrakos in Core Energetics. Both Lowen
and Pierrakos were students and colleagues of
Reich, and all three have written extensively.
In 1972 I began to do yoga. My own adaptation
for voice work of bioenergetic tremors and yoga
stretches exists in their combinations and in a
focus on a fully relaxed torso to allow maximum
spontaneous breathing movement, and, more
specifically, in the use of sound on every
outbreath, no matter how the body is breathing,
without changing the placement or rhythm of that
breathing. This accustoms the actor to the
integration of breath impulse and tone, while it
tends to use only semi-approximated vocal folds
resulting in "fluffy," released, feeling sounds
which are very soothing to over-used, tense
vocal folds, and which can resemble the sounds
that, according to Charles Darwin (1969),
precede language, and which give individual
paralinguistic meaning to speech. Then, after
carefully integrating the unconscious (autonomic
nervous system) patterns with the conscious
(central nervous system) pattern of rib
swing/abdominal support, speech sounds and then
speech are introduced as an extension and
application of the primary breathing function of
oxygenation. This is what I call Restructuring.
Restructuring gives the actor control over the
timing and the variety of delivery choices of
pitch, rate, volume, and tone, and allows
approximate repeatability without loss of either
spontaneity or connection to impulse.
Restructuring,
then, is not only the introduction of
intercostal and abdominal breath management into
the act of speaking, but is also the harmonizing
of that pattern with the individual's physical
and/or emotional needs for oxygen moment to
moment. It requires the ability to isolate
particular parts of the abdominal muscle and of
the intercostal and back muscles, without
interrupting the organic oxygen need. The
Restructuring work for the inbreath expands the
chest cavity where the lungs are largest, in the
lower third of the ribcage, thus bringing in as
much air as needed phrase by phrase without
undue effort in the upper chest but also without
inhibiting any movement that might occur there
as a result of physical need or emotional
involvement. I do not teach Clifford Turner's
"rib reserve," but the actor will find that as
the body accustoms itself to the Restructuring
the ribs will naturally stay out somewhat longer
during speech because the abdominal support
movement (as the Restructuring work for the
outbreath) becomes the vocal action, replacing
the rib-squeeze or neck tension which often seem
to recur when the actor only attempts to stay
"relaxed" while speaking. Speaking requires an
active use of the outbreath during its role as
excitor of vibration.
An awareness of
oxygen need on the autonomic level, and a trust
in his right to pause, or to breathe in when he
has a new thought, are all essential for an
actor while learning Restructuring, so that
upper chest, shoulder, and neck tension do not
develop, and so that hyperventilation does not
occur since the lungs may take in much more
oxygen than normal at one time. I always work
the Restructuring with speech sounds, nonsense,
impromptu speaking, and later, text, because
there is no need to have control over breathing
placement or timing if the actor is not using
the voice. One may then practice the breathing
pattern with various speech sounds in
combination, with varying lengths, speeds,
pitches, and volumes of phrases, with and then
without pauses, and later again with different
styles of texts, character voices, emotional
expressions (e.g. laughing, crying, shouting,
screaming), and body positions, actions, and
interactions, etcetera. I encourage actors
finally not to monitor problems nor even the
involvement of the breath tract and articulators
in the act of speaking, but, with the help of an
imaged "focus line" traveling from the dynamic
abdominal action on the outbreath around the
pelvis to the spine and up into and out from the
"third eye" area, to engage fully, from the
intuitive, physical (and metaphysical, "chi")
centre at the abdomen, in the action of
meaningful communication with another, which
involves receiving as much as
sending.
The sometimes
physically and/or emotionally painful work on
the release of inhibitory tensions in
Destructuring, combined with the mastery and
application of technique in Restructuring, is a
long and often frustrating journey for the
actor, but the rewards are great. The emotional
and artistic growth which occurs during
Destructuring is audible in the tones of voice
and the delivery choices; and just as one may
take a while to learn to ride a bicycle or drive
a stick-shift, but later one is only focused on
arriving at one's destination, the initially
consciously monitored breathing actions of
Restructuring become finally an automatic
response to an actor's need to communicate
meaning effectively. It is at this point that
voice work becomes indistinguishable from
acting.
An examination
of the early development of my Destructuring
work can be found in an unpublished 1978 M.F.A.
thesis by Penelope Court for the Goodman School
of Drama through the Art Institute of Chicago,
and a later look can be found in an unpublished
1993 M.F.A. thesis by Michael Barnes for the
National Conservatory, Denver Center for the
Performing Arts.
Thanks to Dr.
Robert Sataloff, Chairman of the Voice
Foundation, for his comments on a draft of this
article.
This article is
dedicated to the memory of Penelope Court, the
first of my students to teach my
methods.
Works
referenced:
Barthes, Roland:
(1977) Image, Music, Text, New York, Hill and
Wang.
Darwin, Charles:
(1969) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals, New York, Greenwood Press
(reprint).
Kozubei, David:
(1998) Movements:
a do-it-yourself deep therapy.
Lowen,
Alexander, M.D.: (1976) Bioenergetics, New York,
Penguin Books (reprint).
Pierrakos, John
C, M.D.: (1990) Core Energetics, Mendocino CA,
LifeRhythm Publications.