“Stand in a neutral position and relax.”
That’s where the trouble started.
In fall 2023, I was assigned a section of Voice Training 1 for the upcoming spring semester at the University at Buffalo, where I teach in the Department of Theatre and Dance. A requirement for our BFA Performance and Musical Theatre degrees, the course is a standard 200-level, focusing on breath, articulation, resonance, scaling performances to different spaces, and introducing the International Phonetic Alphabet and basic dialect work. I’d last taken such a course over twenty years prior, but I was confident that with a few months to brush up my Linklater, I’d be ready.
Revisiting Kristin Linklater’s workday sequences in my copy of Freeing the Natural Voice, I was surprised by how many of the exercises I had absorbed into my practice as a director, choreographer, and performer over the years. I recalled my time studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, drawing connections between Strasberg’s relaxation and breath work and Linklater’s work, then synthesizing those in my own practice.
The extent to which Linklater’s alignment imagery and spinal/pelvic articulation exercises intersected with my graduate course work in somatics and dance kinesiology was the second surprise from reexamining Freeing the Natural Voice. Such work had been revolutionary for me as a performer. It became another entryway into the course content for me as I developed the course. I had no idea just how integral this intersection with kinesiology would become to my students’ voice training success. Indeed, my entire method of voice training was about to shift, as I learned to how to help students reframe the idea of voice from a noun—a result at which they believe they are meant to arrive—to a coordinated action unique to their bodies.
Voice Training 1
Each class session began with what I call “preparation,” consisting of a warm-up during which I would lead the class in a full body stretch for relaxation and in various exercises for physical alignment. These were followed by the workday sequence from Freeing the Natural Voice. Linklater’s book includes twenty-one “Workdays” to be practiced over a suggested time frame, each with step-by-step exercises and a specific focus beginning with physical awareness and ending with forming sounds into words. Finally, we applied the work to performance texts in various styles, supplemented by additional practices from Knight-Thompson Speechwork® and somatic exercises from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work.
In the first several weeks, students were generally successful in achieving the intended learning outcomes for in-class performances. Often, though, I got the sense that some students were uncertain about what they were doing. Then, in the following class session, most would revert to seemingly unchangeable habits, such as thoracis and laryngeal tension, shallow breath, and postural habits restricting vocal capacity. I felt as though we were starting over each class. Technique, to me, means developing repeatable practice AND confident articulation of that practice. We were not achieving this.
The Moment It Clicks
I remember being coached on a monologue as a college student, making adjustments, taking direction, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Ultimately, the feedback on this “performance” was positive, but I lacked any confidence that I’d be able to replicate something close to it ever again. About a year later, when I was studying at the Strasberg Institute, I suddenly felt—
I understand! I understand that by doing these things—in this sequence—with my attention, the text, my action and senses—I am acting. As much as I need to be, I am in control and at the same spontaneously in the moment.
After the scene, I told my teacher, the late Irma Sandrey, “I think I understand this now.”
According to my notes, to which I still refer regularly, she replied, “Nobody understands. You simply know what you have to do next.”
Philosophical dramas notwithstanding, this felt like success. This was repeatable practice confirmed for me while still holding space for creative alchemy.
How, I wondered, could I help my voice training students feel this success, to “know what they have to do next,” and achieve repeatable outcomes with confidence?
________
I hypothesized: because the students did not seem to retain outcomes of the exercises from one class session to the next, they must not be implementing the exercises in other classes and rehearsals once they left the studio. Without that reinforcement, they must not be retaining the class work.
So I initiated a discussion about using the voice in everyday life versus in class or performance. I was somewhat surprised when the students responded that they were in fact attempting to implement these practices in daily life, in other classes, and in rehearsals. They simply couldn’t replicate the classroom success. I kept digging.
I spent less time demonstrating and more time observing the students during the preparation at the top of class. Very quickly, I realized that the problem was not about understanding the voice exercises. The problem was that the students did not understand their bodies. True physical awareness requires some understanding of the mechanics of movement. The natural voice would never be free in a body that has no idea that it is always defaulting to the misalignments of contemporary life (often from screens, but that’s another essay).
By mirroring movement and action in warm-ups, students were able to arrive at a place of physical preparation for the voice exercises, but they could not repeat it on their own. Even the stronger dancers in the class lacked the physical awareness to arrive at a neutral and relaxed posture without coaching. Thus, any voice work that followed was inhibited by the postural, alignment, and coordination challenges unique to each student. In time, repetition might help them break through to some extent. In my experience as a student, some concepts eventually crystallize and we fully understand what was once rote. But too often students have no idea why or how the action they are repeating is meant to serve their practice.
The Light Bulb Moment
As a graduate student in dance, I was somewhat uncomfortable and insecure in ballet class. I knew intellectually what I was meant to do with my body, but I didn’t understand my body’s quirks. I didn’t know how to overcome my unique physical challenges, and no amount of mirroring shapes was going to correct a muscular imbalance I had no name for. Then I enrolled in Anatomy and Kinesiology.
In a course taught by Professor Julie Lushington, I learned how to identify and articulate my own postural, alignment, and coordination challenges, both congenital and habitual. Using Dance Kinesiology by Sally Sevey Fitt and Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain, both accessible but thorough texts, we conducted baseline analyses of our individual alignments and joint motions. Most significantly, Lushington included strength and flexibility training for synergist and antagonist muscles as well as rehabilitation exercises that we personalized for our individual bodies.
Anatomy and Kinesiology gave me understanding of my body, helping me work toward a more neutral alignment, which in turn expanded my capacity in performance. Ballet class would never be terribly fun with lordosis, bowed legs, and an anterior pelvic tilt, but I finally knew how to work in my own process. I could aspire to my personal best with actionable steps forward.
“You simply know what you have to do next.”
Inspired by Lushington, I later became a certified Pilates instructor, teaching off and on over the years. Pilates has remained my tool for maintaining and owning my alignment and movement capacities as both an artist and a human.
The solution to our voice training stagnation was clear.
________
“Stand in YOUR neutral position and relax.”
Now, we’re getting somewhere.
My Body. My Voice.
Rather than asking students to aspire to neutral through mirroring or magical thinking—a teaching practice that had only frustrated me as a student—I asked them in our next sessions to stand as they are, being present in the body they brought into the room that day. Then we began our lessons in anatomy and kinesiology—the entire skeleton including major bony landmarks and how to find them. Next the joints. Then the muscles that move those joints. We used Anatomy of Movement and Dance Kinesiology to explore neutral alignments and all the variations from neutral we might have as humans. Then I walked the class through my own baseline analysis for my posture, alignment and range of motion. Finally, I assigned the baseline analysis project to the students.
We speak of bodies very differently than we did even ten or fifteen years ago, so the baseline analysis was done at home by each student, using video. Sharing the results was voluntary, but almost every student did so enthusiastically.
By this time, we were more than halfway through the semester. I continued with the Linklater workday sequence, applied assignments, and in-class performances, but the preparation evolved.
We started each day in our own unique version of neutral, incorporating rehabilitation exercises, Pilates mat work, and stretches targeting specific challenges from the students’ baseline analyses. And we talked about the why and the how. This changed everything.
Over the remaining weeks in the semester, students began to consciously apply these principles of anatomy and kinesiology to posture, alignment, and relaxation. Subsequently, this improved vocal resonance and embodiment. Breath control and support improved as students strengthened and learned to activate core and thoracic muscles. They could soon identify synergist and antagonist muscles affecting the ribcage and surrounding the larynx and how those initiated or released tension. Ultimately, students reported a greater understanding of the nuances of voice production as a specific result of a full-body movement experience.
I want to reiterate: Intellectually, most of these concepts were not new to the students at this point in the semester. The change came with new awareness of their own bodies and understanding how to synthesize voice training concepts with enhanced, individualized physical coordination. As the semester ended, the students’ technical growth was a victory. I was determined to take what I’d learned and run with it into the next semester.
Voice Is a Verb
Integrating kinesiology into voice training for actors has been incredibly beneficial for my students over the last three semesters. I believe that without foundational understanding of their own bodies, students will never reach their full voice capacity. Obviously, integration of voice and movement is essential in varying degrees to most voice training techniques. But what physical knowledge and awareness do our students have when they arrive day one? Are they confident enough in their bodies to begin?
Since that first semester, I’ve integrated Blandine Calais-Germain and François Germain’s book, Anatomy of Voice into the coursework. Like Calais-Germain’s Anatomy of Movement, this book familiarizes students with the functional anatomy of their bodies, but entirely within the context of voice production. Additionally, The Singing Athlete by Andrew Byrne is filled with exercises focusing on the individual areas of the bodies that affect the voice through connections in the muscular and nervous systems, including less obvious areas such as the eyes, ears, and skin. Byrne’s text has been popular with my students because it goes beyond kinesiology into physiology, providing actionable steps toward the rehabilitation challenges students have identified through their baseline analyses.
While it can be tempting to spend entire class sessions on alignment and rehabilitation exercises, I continue to remind my students (and myself) that we are studying voice training for acting, and our learning outcomes are about speaking onstage and approaching character through voice. Now, though, I teach those skills in relation to the challenges and capacities of each unique body in my class. We voice our performances with confidence when we understand how our individual bodies work.
That is technique. “You simply know what you have to do next.”
Works Cited
Byrne, Andrew. The Singing Athlete: Brain-Based Training for Your Voice. Andrew Byrne Studio, 2020.
Calais-Germain, Blandine. Anatomy of Movement. Eastland Press, 1993.
Calais-Germain, Blandine, and François Germain. Anatomy of Voice. Healing Arts Press, 2016.
Cohen, Bonnie Bainbridge. Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering®. Wesleyan UP, 2012.
Fitt, Sally Sevey. Dance Kinesiology. Schirmer/Thomson Learning, 1996.
Linklater, Kristin. Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language. 1976. Drama Publishers/Quite Specific Media, 2006.