The Right to Speak

Working with the Voice

Patsy Rodenburg

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350289482
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

"It shouldn't surprise us that politicians, clerics, rock singers as well as actors queue up to train their voices under the supervision of Patsy Rodenburg. This book will explain her popularity among her pupils." – Sir Ian McKellen Practical, passionate and inspiring, this book teaches how to use the voice fully and expressively, without fear and in any situation. Patsy Rodenburg is one of the world's foremost voice and acting coaches, having trained thousands of actors, singers, lawyers, politicians, business people, teachers and students: her book distils that knowledge and experience so that everyone can enjoy the right to speak. Part one is a discursive account of our right to speak which examines impediments to clear, natural, confident speech and establishing habits that will help overcome these, while part two is a practical 'workbook' containing exercises and practical tips, providing a step-by-step approach to using the voice effectively. Covering speech and phonetics, dialects and accents, vocalising heightened emotions, singing, auditions, recording and caring for the health of your voice, these approachable and informative exercises aren't just designed to benefit actors and singers, but a wide range of readers who wish to improve the use of their voice to help them at work or when communicating in formal and informal situations. This Bloomsbury Revelations edition also considers the effect of social media on communication skills, the need for empathetic listening, how scientific discovery now illuminates why and how voice exercises work, and cultural and global issues of ethics and storytelling.

Part One
The Right to Speak

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

William Blake, Songs of Experience

Chapter 1

Declaring Your Vocal Rights

The right to breathe, the right to be physically unashamed, to fully vocalize, to need, choose and make contact with a word, to release a word into space – the right to speak. And in taking your rights you can then feel secure and generous enough to offer others their rights and listen attentively and generously to others.

Every day I meet people in desperate need of voice and speech work who cannot adopt all, a few or even just one of these essential rights. Some outer or inner tension blocks their ability to communicate successfully. It is almost as if they have been forcibly gagged even though the muffle is often barely a visible one. The gag is usually one of an assortment of habits that undermine the potential of anyone’s voice, speech and uncluttered listening. All these habits contribute to an acute fear that so many of us have in common: the fear of speaking out in public or even in private. And if we do manage to speak can we then stand by what we say?

A recent opinion poll taken in America, asking people what single thing frightens them most, put speaking in public at the top of the list of fears above loneliness, financial worry … even death!

My job, as a voice teacher, is to remove that dreaded fear and to hand back to any speaker the fun, joy and ultimately the liberating power a release that speaking well and forcefully can engender; power sadly taken away from most of us for a variety of reasons that will become abundantly clear as we go on.

So before we can adopt a right to speak – or even begin any practical work on the voice itself – we first have to begin to learn how we lost the right in the first place.

Snap judgements

As soon as we open our mouths and speak we are judged. Instant assumptions are made about us by others; about our intelligence, our background, class, race, our education, abilities and ultimately our power. As listeners we do this to each other all the time.

What does our voice reveal about us? Quite a bit. Do we sound enfranchised or disenfranchised? Educated or uneducated? Hesitant or confident? Do we sound as if we should be in charge or just subordinate? Do we sound as though we should be heard and answered?

To the ears of others we are what we speak. For any new listener immediately tries to ‘place us’, instantly decides whether or not we are worth listening to, makes snap judgements about whether or not even to answer us. The evidence suggests that all this information is garnered within 90 seconds of listening.

I realize this blunt assertion is made most obviously about British society where we are still saddled by a fairly rigid and sharply attuned class system in which the voice immediately places us as upper, middle, lower, or probably worst of all, blandly suburban. But in all other countries in which I have worked, including the United States, Canada, India, Japan and throughout Europe, I have experienced the same brutally judgemental attitude based solely on the reaction to someone’s voice and speech habits. Just like a fingerprint a voice-print is an almost infallible form of identification. Our voice marks us in certain ways. And it can mark us for life.

Whenever I work in the American South, for instance, I get telephone calls from businessmen and women who ‘want to sound more northern’ and not so rural. They believe they will earn more respect with a quick change of vocal identity. One of my students in Texas, with a particularly heavy and noticeable regional accent, was repeatedly mocked and mimicked by his classmates whenever he spoke. He believed he was stupid and took the role of class clown. When I challenged him about this he said: ‘But I come from Birmingham, Alabama, and anyone who talks the way I do has got to be stupid!’

A voice teacher in India I once worked with confided how she had to stop her southern Tamil dialect from seeping into her daily speech when speaking the more acceptable Hindi dialect. ‘I won’t be respected,’ she said, ‘if they hear that sound.’ A famous Japanese film actor lamented to me once that his father’s voice betrayed a lowly status. I shall never forget the uproar at a Canadian voice conference I attended in French-speaking Montreal when a Parisian voice coach bluntly asserted that ‘no Canadian actor could speak the plays of Racine and Molière because they sounded too coarse’. So we are instantly known to others by our voice and dialect, and we are actually censored from having the right to speak certain things. You may not believe it is true but there is such a thing as ‘vocal imperialism’.

It seems to me particularly demeaning and criminal, for instance, to tell anyone that their mother sound or accent is not good enough to speak the great texts. I think it is commonly agreed nowadays that Shakespeare’s actors spoke in a variety of regional accents, many of them rough and broad and not the least bit elegant. So why is it that so many American actors, for example, in this day and age still mimic a so-called British voice and accent when they speak Shakespearean verse and prose? It only results in alienating both actor and audience further from the marvels of Shakespeare’s text. Solid American accents, good British regional ones, are every bit as expressive as the refined ones we try to impose on any classical text. And the former two work extremely well when the text is given the right to return to its accentual roots.

Some older theatre audiences, however, still gasp in horror during intervals when they react to the way ‘modern’ actors speak the great dramatic texts in certain of these accents. When I worked with the English Shakespeare Company on their production of The War of the Roses many people who saw and heard those plays on a tour around Great Britain objected to the fact that the Northumberland lords spoke in heavy Northumberland accents!

If we are lucky enough to come from a socially advantaged and culturally dominant background, then snap judgements of this sort can serve the speaker well. All of the above is still true – to an extent. But the pendulum is swinging away from the appreciation and power connected to a privileged voice.

When I first wrote Right to Speak I had to control the more privileged speakers mocking or smirking at regional accents. Now I have to defend the privileged voices from the insults of their fellow students. My point is simple – if your accent is a mother sound, one that you heard in the womb, then it hurts to have it abused.

The other clear change is how some of the better-educated students have adopted an extreme level of inarticulate and sloppy speech. Perhaps texting is being used instead of speech muscles but the outcome is of well-educated students being deliberately incoherent and casual.

Whose right is it anyway?

Older upper class voices can bore into your head. They can sound demanding, belittling and frankly self-important. But listen carefully. They can actually be saying very little, nor are they saying it very well. Only the sound is socially acceptable. Sit in any Mayfair restaurant or have tea in one of the grander London hotels and you can hear the same kind of voices zapping around the space as if all of us ought to be part of the conversation.

To me all these ‘cultivated’ voices are saying one thing: ‘The right to speak is mine and mine alone.’ They have overstepped the right and taken it as their prerogative. They were born, educated and live with the right and will not tolerate any voice that is different from theirs. In our society they have hegemony over the sound of us all.

A whole set of negative or positive assumptions are being made as you open your mouth. Assumptions that have to do with factors like race, culture and social mobility. What I would like to add is that we also have to try and listen beyond our prejudices and any dislike of an accent. Be it an accent connected to class or culture. I am sure we have all been shocked by eventually liking someone after a first meeting when we disliked their speech or voice.

What I have noticed as a teacher does support the notion, however unscientifically posited by me, that environment and social background leave us culturally possessed or dispossessed. The voice we have is a by-product of that background and an expression of it in every way. We are judged when we speak and we are also categorized. The voice, I think, can be likened to one of those ‘identikits’ that sketch artists use to draw an instant profile of someone. We speak and someone quickly takes our measure and has a picture. Through voice and speech we portray ourselves.

Making sound and sense

Many of us blithely will listen to a ‘high status’ sounding speaker, perhaps an eminent cabinet minister or a head of state, uttering complete nonsense and banal clichés but assume he – or she – must be making sense. You can hear it in the confident measured tones of his or her voice. It does sound awfully proper, after all. My, she sounds so good. We the listeners must be at fault for not understanding the nonsensical bits. This quick assumption on our part is based entirely on how the voice sounds and not at all on what sense is being made by the speaker.

I have found myself in many political discussions with people who vote for the Conservative Party even though that group’s policies do not serve their needs. I have heard convictions expressed that simply boil down to: ‘Well the Labour or Liberal candidate doesn’t sound as though he could govern. The Conservative fellow sounds more impressive.’ What is usually swaying judgement is sound and fury not sense and issues. We all make choices like this based on something ephemeral. But how many of us are aware of it?

We are still haunted by the idea that upper-class accents are ‘better’. Many of these so-called better voices are riddled with their own tensions and sound alarmingly unclear if you actually take the time to listen carefully. These voices, like our own, are riddled with tensions that block effective communication. What is now apparent after the latest recession is the educated speakers who sound powerful and yet say nothing have fallen. The shell of ‘good speech’ and fine-sounding presentations from leaders that know nothing has been shattered. ‘Sizzle without the steak’ as one CEO called it. Many in the financial markets have concluded that these ‘hollow men and women’ led their companies over a cliff and were not fully challenged. Consequently, those who do know their material and have motored companies from the back room are now rushing to learn how to speak effectively as they learn to lead. All leadership has good communicating at its heart and the perfect combination for a good communicator is sound and sense in harmony with an ability to listen and engage in dialogue with all levels of a company or as a parent, a family. Part of what I want to do in this book, along with helping you to work on your own voice, is also to educate your ear. I want to get you attuned to hearing the habits in your own voice and those of others.

Along the way I also want to emphasize how important caring is. Caring that you are heard and caring they listen. In other words not being careless as you speak but fully attentive. If it matters you should never be casual.

A quick look at the problem

Let’s take a quick look at the problem and begin to explore all the forces that can conspire against our right to speak and which prevent us from working on our voices ourselves.

I want to look at how the voice gets blocked, the different kinds of strain and tensions we make our voices suffer and how the voice can be released from all this anxiety and extended in range and colour. Mostly I want you to see for yourself how the conspiracy against your right to speak evolves. How background, gender, injury or illness can all taint the sound we make. Maybe I can explode some of the nagging myths that awe, frighten and sometimes paralyse so many average speakers.

My job, as I see it, is to get you past a problem and to hand back to any speaker the fun, joy and ultimate power that each of us should experience through speaking and communicating easily; power sadly robbed from us for a variety of reasons.

Nothing is quite so freeing and enlarging as a liberated voice. So let’s begin in a spirit of trust and see if it leads us to freedom. Let’s start with a story.

Chapter 2
‘God Doesn’t Mind A Bum Note’

I once met a black American gospel singer on the London leg of a world tour. I imagine she was nearly 80 years old. During her concert I heard the most wonderful and exciting voice: liberated, clear and adventurous. She had the kind of voice any of us would love to possess. Sounds flowed freely from her. How did she do it? After her concert we met and talked.

‘How long have you been singing?’ I asked.

‘Since I was 7,’ she replied.

‘How many times a week do you sing?’

‘Oh, three or four times a day.’

‘You mean one day once a week?’

‘Oh, no, three or four times a day, seven days a week!’

‘Every week?’

‘Yes.’

At this point I begin to be very intrigued and shocked.

‘Haven’t you ever lost your voice or suffered acute strain and fatigue?’

‘No.’

‘That’s amazing. Are you saying,’ I went on, ‘that in all your years of singing you’ve never had trouble with your voice, never had to see a doctor or throat specialist, never had special voice lessons?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am so astonished,’ I continued, ‘because most performers and public speakers, given such a punishing vocal chore, would be in serious trouble by now.’

At this reaction she threw back her head, laughed out loud and through the hilarity said, ‘Oh, my dear, but you see God doesn’t mind a bum note!’

Any actor, singer or professional speaker – people who use their voices daily – will immediately see the relevance of this story. Performers particularly have a peculiar – if not downright obsessive – need to sound right all the time, every time. ‘Sounding right’ haunts most speakers, not just professionals, and consequently freezes our ability and freedom both vocally and imaginatively. We resist taking our God-given right to speak and vocalize fully because all of us are afraid of sounding ‘a bum note’. But like the lady says, if God doesn’t mind why should we?

The singer knew the power of release but also the balance of care. She did not sing carelessly but she was respectful and not casual.

Self-judgement

My encounter with that black gospel singer (and my incredulous questions to her) stays with me even today because it relates, I have always felt, to any and all speakers: we all harbour a fundamental fear about our voices, we are racked by severe self-judgements. Self-judgement manifests itself in forms of censoring. First we are censored by others, stopping our voices or what we say. Outside censoring then can embed itself into self-censoring. You cannot be free with censorship or joyous. I have worked with Zulus, particularly in Soweto. Anyone who has ever heard Zulus sing will know how thrilling and free their voices sound, how joyous they look as they sing. I was extremely moved when I was told by several Zulus that they never told anyone that they couldn’t sing. So they all sing! Fear of not being perfect leads to censoring and the censoring of our voices leads to fear and often the casual and underuse of our voice.

That fear is bound up with the way we think we sound to others. This self-judgement can and does prevent us from communicating fully to the world. This obstruction is so strong it will often create permanent vocal habits that physically and spiritually constrict our voices. It can actually turn some of us into vocal cripples.

Once coaxed into life these habits, or what I earlier called self-imposed gags, become afflictions that most of us are barely even aware of. They hide and nag us or even become comfortable benign parts of us. They tend to be more subtle and even subliminal than overt and clinging. They become part of every speech transaction we make. The further we move away from our innate vocal freedom and hide behind habitual obstacles, the wider the gap becomes between us and our right to speak.

Each day I confront people who are handicapped with self-judgement of all ...