voice and suzuki training

...finished teaching six days of Suzuki Actor Training workshop last Saturday, 18^th here in Melbourne, Australia. There were many things of note such as the approach to vocal training.

Because it's easy for such highly demanding physical exercises which focus on isolating effort in the 'centre' (the abdomen) - and this so happens to be where the voice is centred - actors who have done the work for a while can get into the habit of losing control and over-projecting their voice, thereby losing the ability to vary pitch, rhythm and tone associated with shifts in meaning, geography or body.

One way to practice variation (and by no means the only one), is to pay attention to the direction and distance of the focal point... I mean in terms of voice, the point to which one is speaking. I think I could perceive variation in the resonant volume and quality of the voice when the imagined distance between the actor and their focal point varied.

I have often wondered at the idea that if one is doing the Suzuki exercises truly, the body becomes energised; and because the voice is produced from the body, it too becomes energised. And I have seen it happen many times, that some kind of fakery is associated with this. That is, that actors are instructed to produce the voice with energy and this is interpreted to mean, speak with volume and that this volume may not be directly associated with the aesthetic of the body’s centre.

In some ways, Suzuki training is in opposition to the New York “method” based on Stanislavski's principle of social realism and the process of text analysis where variation to the rhythm and 'weight' of words according to meaning is done based on psychological tenets. In my own work, and having studied, in the West, the more traditional Stanislavski method of acting first, I often wondered if a contradiction in fact existed.

Meaning is important to communication and important to freeing the actor's voice. Tadashi Suzuki has developed training exercises which give the actor an alternative to the usual tools employed in mainstream Western theatre traditions. They are aimed at opening the door to a more archetypal existence onstage. I know from personal experience that it is possible to enjoy the communication of the meaning of text while adhering to the hyper-charged (!) modes of Suzuki training... is there a contradiction?

I think perhaps, the advent of shouted voice production seen in the Australian context of Suzuki training (and others?), is just a failure to analyse the real connection between voice and a communicative body.

To my view, it's more of a test, if in the first place, the voice is left to its own devices. Ask the inexperienced student to use their natural voice and see how the successful engagement of the body with Suzuki exercises varies the production of the voice.

In this way, the actor can analyse the difference between vocal production with and without the engagement of the natural animism of the body. In this workshop, short though it was, I think this idea started to show the signs of a true engagement.

It's dangerous territory. Because actor's walk into a workshop with many pre-conceptions about what their theatre is. The small world of naturalism that actors regurgitate so readily because they have been raised on non-sweating television fodder rears its pathetic head too easily.

But it is a worthy experiment if only to attempt to break actors from vocal habits in the same way that the ‘statues’ and other or all of the exercises help to analyse the habits of actors.

To me, it was of great value to see people approaching the work for the first time and paying attention to the vocal aspect of the body from the outset. I think it was certainly rewarding to establish consideration of the relationship of vocal technique with the body early.

It’s an investigation to be continued, but it may be a topic for discussion? I would imagine many others have faced this issue in the past?

regards

Matt

p.s. if you're in the States here's where you do Suzuki training:

http://siti.org/training/