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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