Performance anxiety: loss of the spoken edge.

DAVID GATTEN AND FRED WORDEN IN CONVERSATIONINCLUDING ANNOTATIONS FROM PREVIOUS CONVERSATIONS WITH KEN JACOBS AND FRED WORDEN.This edited conversation between filmmakers Fred Worden and David Gatten took place on July 22, 2011 at Gattens studio in Salina, Colorado. It was motivated by ideas discussed in two previous conversations that took place in 1981 (with Worden, Ken and Flo Jacobs and Monique Ernst) and 2011 (with Worden, the Jacobs' and Ernie Gehr). Short excerpts from which have been used to annotate the text.On March 17, 1981 Jacobs presented Ken Jacobs Theater Of Unconscionable Stupidity Presents CAMERA THRILLS OF THE WAR at Collective for Living Cinema, New York. The 90-minute piece was a Nervous System1 reworking of Camera Thrills of the War! [c. 1945], a Castle Films home-movie release comprising of WWII combat footage. Jacobs' perceptual and aestheticized treatment of images of death prompted some critical audience responses and a review by Jim Hoberman in the Village Voice2 which, citing the artist's reservations towards Stan Brakhage's 23rd Psalm Branch [1967]3, questioned the basis of Jacobs's new work. The day after the performance Jacobs sat down in New York with Fred Worden, who had seen the work, to discuss Jacobs' motives and the responses to it. I discovered an audio recording of their exchange amongst Jacobs' tapes in 2010 and invited Worden to hold a new conversation with Jacobs, 30-years on, to revisit a similar set of ideas broadly concerning politics and experimental film. They spoke in New York on July 3, 2011 and were joined by Ernie Gehr. Shortly after Worden invited David Gatten to listen to the previous tapes and talk to him separately about the issues raised and his response to them as an artist, teacher and contemporary in the field. - William RoseFRED WORDEN: Let me go back and pick up on something that came up with Ken in '81. He'd shown Ken Jacobs' Theata* Of Unconscionable Stupidity Presents CAMERA THRILLS OF THE WAR - which was a two-hour Nervous System reworking of WWII footage including scenes of airplanes being shot down and crashing into the ocean. Then there was a review by Hoberman in the Voice in which he raised the question about aestheticizing war and violence, which has always stmck me as slightly hoary, but let's accept it as a question and let me ask you what you think about that. Do you think this is an important issue for artists to engage with? What are your responsibilities if you use a certain kind of pictorial material?DAVID GATTEN: I think the responsibility would be to transform or illuminate it and to allow us to see it in a different way. Through formal gestures that could be editing, that could be the Nervous System apparatus - which is of course designed to make you experience things in a different way. His only responsibility is to make us see it differently. His responsibility is not to give us an answer about how to feel about it - that's the most boring thing you could possibly imagine.FW: There are always people that want to argue that our films are not political enough and question how we can make these abstractions in the face of what's going on in the world. Do you accept those basic arguments that any filmmaker has some responsibility to engage with the facts of the world and not go off into some kind of aesthetic abstraction?DG: My response would be that all films are political because all films exist within a larger context. One of the possible contexts that will be superimposed on any cultural production is a political one. There's no such thing as making an "apolitical" film. The most abstract film is still a political film. It may not be taking a position on a political issue of the day by seeking to inform, advocate or incite action - which I think is what people actually mean when they say a "political" film.Propaganda is very good for getting people excited and moving people to take action. That's great, and there is a place for activist filmmaking. …

The Responsibility of Forms

The article discusses how the direct instruction versus constructivism debate in educational literature relates to the voice pedagogy field. Outlining three spoken (or well researched) debates in the field, the article traces the history of voice and speech pedagogy and explores how direct instruction versus constructivism acts as a dominant and unspoken dispute within the discipline. The central argument states that all instructors prefer either direct instruction or constructivism teaching methods. The author offers a question-and-answer case study and concludes that voice instructors should teach to a variety of learning styles, incorporating both direct instruction and constructivism practices. Insisting that students only learn in the preferred learning style of the instructor is the sacred cow of the conservatory.

The unspoken voice and speech debate [or] the sacred cow in the conservatory

Second Dialect Acquisition by Jeff Siegel aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the largely understudied field of second dialect acquisition (SDA), as distinct from second language acquisitio...

Second Dialect Acquisition

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Reading Breath in Literature

In NTQ47 (August 1996), Sarah Werner argued that contemporary voice training did not provide a neutral set of tools to help actors perform classical texts, and that it was needful to reveal the cultural biases and underlying ideology of voice work in order to clarify a feminist understanding of acting and speaking Shakespeare. The three leading voice practitioners who came under Ms Werner's fire – Cicely Berry, Kristin Linklater, and Patsy Rodenburg – mounted a sturdy defence of their methods in NTQ49 (February 1997), to which Sarah Werner responded in the following issue. Now Jane Boston takes a fresh view of all sides in the argument, putting these into a broader historical context which embraces the culture of our own times as much as of Shakespeare's, and calls for an understanding and reconciliation of mutual misconceptions between the academy and the conservatoire. Jane Boston was a founding member of the feminist Siren Theatre in the ‘eighties, and has subsequently taught at the National Youth Theatre, the Poor School, and at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where she was Head of Voice for the BA in Acting, which she helped to create. She now combines a pedagogical and practical role at Central as supervisor and trainer on the Postgraduate Diploma in Voice Studies, and has recently presented papers on acting and stress at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Voice: the Practitioners, their Practices, and their Critics

Breath in Action looks at the significance of breath to human life - not just the simple fact that if we stop breathing, we die, but also the more subtle ways in which our breath interacts with our voice and our being. Combining theory with practice, many of the chapters also offer clearly laid out breathing exercises and techniques.

Breath in Action: The Art of Breath in Vocal and Holistic Practice

The article examines the practice of verse text as a key element in spoken voice work in UK conservatoire actor training. It lays out the context for a historical debate that challenges practitioner essentialism and re-positions voice practice in the light of the adoption of a range of critical and reflective approaches. It suggests that the imbrication of a number of critical frames within the practice renders the work more transparent than was previously the case and, thereby, offers a new model of studio practice. The article draws on sources such as neuro-science, literary studies and poetics in triangulation with practice- led case studies from an auto-ethnographic voice practitioner perspective. Previously undocumented conservatoire voice practice is also signalled in the work of two voice coaches, Elizabeth Pursey and Betty Mulcahy. The former is representative of a long tradition of voice practice in the mainstream UK acting conservatoires and the latter is a professional verse reader with a practice that adopts similar values. Their work is situated alongside my own verse speaking practice and in combination, it provides a context for framing existing voice traditions with suggestion about new studio frameworks. Conclusions reached include the notion that transparent concepts of authorship and listener receptivity will enhance studio work and that research-led reflection on voice and verse practice will foster an enhanced perception of the auditory message in live performance more widely.

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Poetic text in contemporary voice training: a repositioning

The gendering of pitch. In this short essay, I lay out a number of practice-led insights about the gendered perception of the materiality of pitch. The research sits within a wider body of work that applies both feminist and gender theory to voice practice. Theories about the ways in which ‘individuality and the resonances of our gestures are carried in the vocalic bodies we emanate’ are particularly relevant to this discussion about perceptions of difference (Bonenfant 2010, p. 77).

Pitch and gender in voice training: new methodological directions

ABSTRACT The work of the practitioner voice educator has changed dramatically over the past decade. Inclusive and accessible education and training requirements have made new paradigms essential. It is no longer assumed in UK higher education and conservatory actor training contexts that the student experience will be subordinated to the pedagogical leadership of the tutor. To the contrary. Pedagogical design has increasingly engaged with the idea of re-situating the student/tutor learning dynamic to give value to multiple positions of knowledge in the training studio and to reflect diverse student experiences around race, class, gender, sexuality, and neurodiversity. The work to expose and reflect upon the impact of the re-positioned personal and professional knowledge of both trainer and student in the voice studio, is the focus of this article. The author argues that student interests are best served by practices informed by transparent and intersectional principles of engagement. The author discusses several ways in which to regard the social construction of vocal materiality as a baseline for work in the experiential studio. The account offers a critique of existing voice pedagogy and practice and suggests a theoretical framework by which to develop innovative and socially responsive voice praxis.

Jane Boston

Papers

Voice: the Practitioners, their Practices, and their Critics

Breath in Action: The Art of Breath in Vocal and Holistic Practice

Poetic text in contemporary voice training: a repositioning

Pitch and gender in voice training: new methodological directions

Voice Praxis: Social Positionality in UK Spoken Word Practice