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Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience (Routledge Voice Studies)
by Konstantinos Thomaidis Ben MacphersonVoice Studies brings together leading international scholars and practitioners, to re-examine what voice is, what voice does, and what we mean by "voice studies" in the process and experience of performance. This dynamic and interdisciplinary publication draws on a broad range of approaches, from composing and voice teaching through to psychoanalysis and philosophy, including: voice training from the Alexander Technique to practice-as-research; operatic and extended voices in early baroque and contemporary underwater singing; voices across cultures, from site-specific choral performance in Kentish mines and Australian sound art, to the laments of Kraho Indians, Korean pansori and Javanese wayang; voice, embodiment and gender in Robertson’s 1798 production of Phantasmagoria, Cathy Berberian radio show, and Romeo Castellucci’s theatre; perceiving voice as a composer, listener, or as eavesdropper; voice, technology and mobile apps. With contributions spanning six continents, the volume considers the processes of teaching or writing for voice, the performance of voice in theatre, live art, music, and on recordings, and the experience of voice in acoustic perception and research. It concludes with a multifaceted series of short provocations that simply revisit the core question of the whole volume: what is voice studies?
Voice Terminal Echo: Postmodernism and English Renaissance Texts (Routledge Revivals)
by Jonathan GoldbergFirst published in 1986, this title examines a set of English Renaissance texts by Shakespeare, Spenser, Herbert, Marvell and Milton, within the theoretic framework of postmodern thought. Following an opening chapter that argues for the value of this conjunction as a way of understanding literary history, subsequent chapters draw upon Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of photocentrism and Jacques Lacan’s analysis of the agency of the letter to offer fully theorized readings. Throughout, there is a sustained concern with the transformations of such Ovidian figures as Narcissus and Echo, Perseus and Medusa, Orpheus and Eurydice, and with the echo effects of Virgilian pastoral, as paradigms for the interplay of voice and writing.
Voice and New Writing, 1997–2007
by Maggie InchleyVoice and New Writing, 1997–2007 uses the voice as a focus for critical enquiry. It explores new writing theatres' claims to 'find' and to represent previously marginalised voices during Tony Blair's decade as Prime Minister. Hearing 'cultural evidence' for what Raymond Williams termed 'structures of feeling' in the articulation of identities, Maggie Inchley attends to the negotiation of accepted etiquettes of articulation and audibility through processes used in writing, voice training and performance. In the voices of theatre this book hears the narrative of betrayal around Anthony Giddens' 'promise of democracy', and an embattled belief in both transparency and dialogue as necessary conditions of representation. Voice and New Writing, 1997 – 2007 explores the use of voices in the work of writers including debbie tucker green, Gregory Burke, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Enda Walsh, Mark Ravenhill, and Dennis Kelly, as well as exploring the influential practice of voice teachers Cicely Berry, Patsy Rodenburg, Kristin Linklater and others.
Voice and Speech in the Theatre (Stage And Costume Ser.)
by Malcolm Morrison J. Clifford TurnerThis is a classic book on voice and speech, designed for actors at all levels. One of the great voice teachers of his day, J. Clifford Turner here uses simple and direct language to impart the necessary technical 'basics' of speech and voice.
Voice and the Actor
by Cicely BerryThere is no right way--there are only a million wrong ways, which are wrong because they deny what would otherwise be affirmed. Wrong uses of the voice are those that constipate feeling, constrict activity, blunt expression, level out idiosyncrasy, generalize experience, coarsen intimacy. These blockages are multiple and are the results of acquired habits that have become part of the automatic vocal equipment; unnoticed and unknown, they stand between the actor's voice as it is and as it could be and they will not vanish by themselves. So the work is not how to do but how to permit: how, in fact, to set the voice free. And since life in the voice springs from emotion, drab and uninspiring technical exercises can never be sufficient. Cicely Berry never departs from the fundamental recognition that speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life.
Voice as Art: From Theatre to Forensics (Routledge Voice Studies)
by Richard CouzinsVoice as Art considers how artists have used human voices since they became reproducible and entered art discourse in the twentieth century. The discussion embeds artworks using voices within historical and theoretical contexts in a comparative overview arguing that reproduction caused increased creativity moving from acting to creating phonic materials framed by phenomenological deep listening by early video and performance to the plurality and sampling of postmodernism and the multiple angles of contemporary forensic listening. This change is an example of how artistic practice reveals the ideologies of listening. Using a range of examples from Hugo Ball, Martha Rosler, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Janet Cardiff and Mike Kelley through to contemporary practice by Shilpa Gupta, The Otolith Group and Elizabeth Price, the voice is tracked through modernism and postmodernism to posthumanism in relation to speaking subjects, sculptural objects, documents, dramaturgical utterance, forensic evidence, verbatim techniques and embodied listening. This book gives artists, researchers and art audiences ways to understand how voices exist in between theoretical discourses, and how with their utterances, artists create new dispositions in space by reworking genres to critique cultural form and meaning. This book will be of great interest to students and practitioners of sound art, visual culture and theatre and performance.
Voice in Motion
by Gina BloomVoice in Motion explores the human voice as a literary, historical, and performative motif in early modern English drama and culture, where the voice was frequently represented as struggling, even failing, to work. In a compelling and original argument, Gina Bloom demonstrates that early modern ideas about the efficacy of spoken communication spring from an understanding of the voice's materiality. Voices can be cracked by the bodies that produce them, scattered by winds when transmitted as breath through their acoustic environment, stopped by clogged ears meant to receive them, and displaced by echoic resonances. The early modern theater underscored the voice's volatility through the use of pubescent boy actors, whose vocal organs were especially vulnerable to malfunction.Reading plays by Shakespeare, Marston, and their contemporaries alongside a wide range of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century texts--including anatomy books, acoustic science treatises, Protestant sermons, music manuals, and even translations of Ovid--Bloom maintains that cultural representations and theatrical enactments of the voice as "unruly matter" undermined early modern hierarchies of gender. The uncontrollable physical voice creates anxiety for men, whose masculinity is contingent on their capacity to discipline their voices and the voices of their subordinates. By contrast, for women the voice is most effective not when it is owned and mastered but when it is relinquished to the environment beyond. There, the voice's fragile material form assumes its full destabilizing potential and becomes a surprising source of female power. Indeed, Bloom goes further to query the boundary between the production and reception of vocal sound, suggesting provocatively that it is through active listening, not just speaking, that women on and off the stage reshape their world.Bringing together performance theory, theater history, theories of embodiment, and sound studies, this book makes a significant contribution to gender studies and feminist theory by challenging traditional conceptions of the links among voice, body, and self.
Voice-Overs: A Practical Guide with CD (Stage And Costume Ser.)
by Bernard Graham ShawVoice-Overs is an insider's guide to voicing radio and television commercials. Bernard Graham Shaw draws upon his nearly 20 years of voice-work experience to teach valuable studio skills and offers practical advice on how to build a voice-over career.
Voice: Onstage and Off
by Robert Barton Rocco Dal VeraThis new and updated edition of Voice: Onstage and Off is a comprehensive guide to the process of building, mastering, and fine-tuning the voice for performance. Revised with the contemporary actor in mind, this fourth edition empowers actors wishing to master their voice as performers. Every aspect of vocal work is covered, from the initial speech impulse and the creation of sound, right through to refining the final product in different types of performance. Tackling emerging discussions at the intersections of voice and identity, with new content dedicated to voice for trans and non-binary actors, as well as introducing students and practitioners to the anatomical aspects of voice and to auditory awareness, the book equips actors to hone, care for, and define their voice. Among other new features in this fourth edition are coverage of transgender acting and heightened auditory awareness, which bring this established textbook to a modern audience.This highly adaptable course of study empowers performers of all levels to combine and evolve their onstage and offstage voices.Online resources are available for each chapter, including audio examples, additional exercises, and content for instructors.
Voices
by Susan GriffinDrama \ 5f \ Unit set \ A play in poetry about the lives of five women who don't know one another, nor speak to each other. Rather they're telling their life stories to the audience. Each is facing some crisis in life. Erin speaks bitterly of suicide. Kate, near the end of a life in which she always overcame circumstances, is fearful of death. All the voices speak in counterpoint to one another, leaving an unspoken dialogue as they echo one another. The play moves in counterpoint and resonance until the women speak in chorus their voices exchanging scenes from a common history. Then each sees where her life has moved her. In the end these women's voices are no longer isolated, nor are their lives separate. Voices opened to great audience acclaim in New York City.
Voices and Texts in Early Modern Italian Society
by Brian Richardson Massimo Rospocher Stefano Dall’AglioThis book studies the uses of orality in Italian society, across all classes, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, with an emphasis on the interrelationships between oral communication and the written word. The Introduction provides an overview of the topic as a whole and links the chapters together. Part 1 concerns public life in the states of northern, central, and southern Italy. The chapters examine a range of performances that used the spoken word or song: concerted shouts that expressed the feelings of the lower classes and were then recorded in writing; the proclamation of state policy by town criers; songs that gave news of executions; the exercise of power relations in society as recorded in trial records; and diplomatic orations and interactions. Part 2 centres on private entertainments. It considers the practices of the performance of poetry sung in social gatherings and on stage with and without improvisation; the extent to which lyric poets anticipated the singing of their verse and collaborated with composers; performances of comedies given as dinner entertainments for the governing body of republican Florence; and a reading of a prose work in a house in Venice, subsequently made famous through a printed account. Part 3 concerns collective religious practices. Its chapters study sermons in their own right and in relation to written texts, the battle to control spaces for public performance by civic and religious authorities, and singing texts in sacred spaces.
Voices in the Creation of an Indigenous Trinidad and Tobago Theatre
by Patrick BrennanThis book explores how, from the mid-20th century, a new form of theatre emerged in Trinidad and Tobago as its playwrights came to mine the Afro-Creole Trinidadian folk milieu. This book focuses primarily on the period from the 1950s through to the contemporary moment, investigating how Trinidad’s theatrical practitioners developed methodologies that formulated an indigenous theatre. It examines how in its creation, it would distance itself from Western forms as the stage was decolonized, making way for a variety of new forms that mimetically reflect the reality of Trinidad’s Afro-Creole folk. This book establishes a premise on which the terms “folk” and “indigenous” have been shaped by Trinidad’s socio-historical past. It develops an argument that outlines how Trinidad’s African cultural retentions form a central basis on which a theatrical tradition was established.This book traces the historical impetus and driving forces that gave rise to a body of writers for whom the vitally important link between the production of drama and the search for identity in the immediacy of the post-colonial period is established. The book develops a structure that forms three lines of discrete research: folk expression, women, their portrayal and their emergence as theatrical practitioners, and theatrical developments through the decades. These subject areas are examined through the work of a broad body of playwrights. Exploring their theory and praxis, their work is described in terms that exhibit a variety of genres, with tropes that have become indelible resources for theatrical practitioners to draw from. With a theatrical base that extends from popular comedy to avant-garde spiritual works, the theatre is shown to represent a composite entity, one that accommodates a plurality of forms, which, in their summation, express the breadth and depth of Trinidad and Tobago’s theatrical journey, one that is still very much underway.Readers that have an interest in theatre, cultural, gender, post-colonial, or Caribbean studies will enjoy this book.
Voices of a Generation: Three Millennial Plays
by edited by Michelle MacArthurVoices of a Generation gathers three Canadian plays that crack open millennial stereotypes to reveal a generation’s complex and varied experiences. zahgidiwin/love by Frances Koncan follows Namid through multiple generations: as a survivor of abuse in a residential school in the 1960s, as a missing woman held in a suburban basement in the 1990s, and as the rebellious daughter of a tyrannical queen in a post-apocalyptic, matriarchal society. A comedy about loss in the era of truth and reconciliation, zahgidiwin/love uses a mash-up of theatrical styles to embody the millennial creative impulse to remix and remake while presenting a vital perspective on what decolonization might look like both on and off stage. The Millennial Malcontent by Erin Shields is a gender-swapped adaptation of Sir John Vanbrugh’s Restoration Comedy The Provoked Wife, following a group of millennials during a night out as they search for love and sex and document it all on social media. Satirizing every trope from social media stardom to economic precarity to slacktivism, Shields reveals the loneliness lurking under every smiling profile photo. In Smoke by Elena Belyea, Aiden’s ex Jordan arrives at Aiden’s door to confront her about the allegation that Jordan sexually assaulted her two years ago, forcing them to discuss their conflicting memories of their last night together and whether and how they’re going to move forward. With Jordan meant to be performed by either a cis-male or cis-female actor, Smoke is a nuanced examination of issues and perceptions surrounding sexual assault and consent.
Voices of the Land: The Seed Savers and Other Plays
by Katherine KollerThe sound of the wind across a Prairie field, the smell of grass on the first day of spring, the vocalization of birds in the early morning woods, the silence of the lake at night interrupted by call of the loon – these are the shapes and sounds of the Prairie landscape. Katherine Koller invokes the Prairie setting as a central character in each of the four plays in Voices of the Land. Serving a supportive and, at other times, antagonistic role, the landscape acts upon the characters, driving and intensifying their transformation. The land and those who live in intimate terms with it are the focus of Koller’s plays. In The Seed Savers, farmers face pressure to purchase genetically modified seed; a protagonist refuses to sell untilled land for development in Cowboy Boots and a Corsage; a dying woman sees a lake as her final resting place in Abby’s Place; and in The Early Worm Club, Millie realizes a deep sense of belonging to the Alberta parkland and its birds while searching for her mate. Nature goes beyond mere setting and backdrop in these plays to effect transformation and resolution on the characters. Ranging from romantic comedy to drama and from one-act to full-length, the plays in Voices of the Land show western Canadians at the point of leaving, returning, and renewing against the backdrop of their native landscape.
Volpone (New Mermaids Ser.)
by Ben Jonson Robert WatsonThe sharpest, funniest comedy about money and morals in the 17th century is still the sharpest and funniest about those things in the 21st. The full, modernised play text is accompanied by incisive commentary notes which communicate the devastating comic energy of Volpone's satire. The introduction provides a firm grounding in the play's social and literary contexts, demonstrates how careful close-reading can expand your enjoyment of the comedy, shows the relevance of Jonson's critique to our modern economic systems, and provides a clear picture of how the main relationships in the play function on the page and stage. <P><P>Supplemented by a plot summary and annotated bibliography, it is ideal for students of Jonson, city comedy and early modern drama.
Volpone and Other Plays
by Ben JonsonThe three plays collected in this volume depict the faults, errors and foibles of ordinary people with exuberant humour, savage satire and acute observations. Volpone portrays a rich Venetian who pretends to be dying so that his despised acquaintances will flock to his bedside with extravagant gifts in hope of an inheritance. The Alchemist also deals with greed and gullibility, as a rascally trio of confidence tricksters, claiming to have the legendary Philosopher's Stone, fool a series of victims who are hoping to make some easy money. And in a wonderfully energetic portrait of Jacobean life, Bartholomew Fair shows a diverse group of Londoners sampling the delights and temptations of the Fair - and the traders, prostitutes and cutpurses who set out to exploit them.
Volpone and The Alchemist (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)
by Ben JonsonThese much-studied and frequently performed comedies by the great Elizabethan playwright satirize the greed, mendacity, gullibility, and pretension that Jonson saw rampant in 17h-century London society. Both plays feature colorful characters, ingenious plotting, biting wit, and sharp insight into human nature. This is the only edition to include both plays in one, inexpensive volume.
Vorhang auf?: Ein Streifzug durch die Geschichte der Opern-Ouvertüre
by Anselm GerhardDie Ouvertüre gehört zur Oper wie der Spitzenton in der höchsten Sopran- oder Tenor-Lage. Sollte man meinen. Dabei beginnt längst nicht jede Oper mit einer Ouvertüre. Dieses Buch beschreibt Erscheinungsformen und Funktionen der instrumentalen Einleitung im Musiktheater vom Barock bis in die Moderne. Der Blick ist dabei auf den Zusammenhang zwischen Eröffnungsmusik und Bühnenhandlung gerichtet, auf etwas, was in der Frühzeit der Oper gerade nicht angestrebt worden war, sich dann aber Schritt für Schritt entwickelte. So erzählt das Buch viele unbekannte Geschichten von konventionellen und vor allem unkonventionellen Lösungen, wie eine Oper eröffnet und ein Publikum zur Aufmerksamkeit gerufen wurde. Schon im 18. Jahrhundert gab es beispielsweise Pantomimen bei geöffnetem Vorhang – und zwar lange bevor ‚moderne‘ Opernregie solche Aktionen traditionellen Ouvertüren hinzuerfinden sollte. Auch davon ist, in einem Bogen von Monteverdis „Orfeo“ bis zu Brittens „Owen Wingrave“, die Rede.
Vsevolod Meyerhold (Routledge Performance Practitioners)
by Prof Jonathan PitchesVsevolod Meyerhold considers the life and work of the extraordinary twentieth-century director and theatre-maker. This compact, well-illustrated volume includes: a biographical introduction to Meyerhold’s life a clear explanation of his theoretical writings an analysis of his masterpiece production Revisor, or The Government Inspector a comprehensive and usable description of the ‘biomechanical’ exercises he developed for training the actor. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.
W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom: Becoming a Cultural Icon (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)
by Arthur Frank WertheimW. C. Fields is known as a virtuoso comedian and legendary iconoclast who gave the gift of laughter to multitudes. As the first author to use the newly-opened Fields Papers at the Academy library, Arthur Frank Wertheim illuminates the comedian’s arduous ascent to stardom during Hollywood's golden age. The book reveals details of Fields’s turbulent private life, from his wife's refusal to divorce, to his estranged son, and to his fleeting relationships with women. Here is a portrait of an aggrieved artist whose emotional anguish found refuge in his poignant comedy about life’s frustrations and the human condition. This third volume in Wertheim's trilogy documents Fields's rise to iconic status during the counterculture 1960s, creating a legacy of his comedy for generations to come.
W.B. Yeats and World Literature: The Subject of Poetry
by Barry SheilsArguing for a reconsideration of William Butler Yeats’s work in the light of contemporary studies of world literature, Barry Sheils shows how reading Yeats enables a fuller understanding of the relationship between the extensive map of world literary production and the intensities of poetic practice. Yeats’s appropriation of Japanese Noh theatre, his promotion of translations of Rabindranath Tagore and Shri Purohit Swãmi, and his repeated ventures into American culture signalled his commitment to moving beyond Europe for his literary reference points. Sheils suggests that a reexamination of the transnational character of Yeats's work provides an opportunity to reflect critically on the cosmopolitan assumptions of world literature, as well as on the politics of modernist translation. Through a series of close and contextual readings, the book demonstrates how continuing global debates around the crises of economic liberalism and democracy, fanaticism, asymmetric violence, and bioethics were reflected in the poet's formal and linguistic concerns. Challenging orthodox readings of Yeats as a late-romantic nationalist, W.B. Yeats and World Literature: The Subject of Poetry makes a compelling case for reading Yeats’s work in the context of its global modernity.
W.C. Fields from the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway Stage to the Screen
by Arthur Frank WertheimThis book reveals how Fields became a character comedian while performing in Broadway's most illustrious revue, the Ziegfeld Follies. As the first biography to use the recently opened Fields Papers at the Motion Picture Academy, the book explores how Fields years as a Follies entertainer portraying a beleaguered husband and a captivating conman became a landmark turning point in his career, leading to his fame as a masterful film comedian. The book also untangles a web of mysteries about Fields's turbulent private life, from the heartrending stories about the tragic relationship with his calculating wife who refused to divorce him, to his estranged son controlled by his mother, to the seven-year extra-marital affair with a chorus girl that led to the birth of an unwanted child. This electrifying saga illuminates a complex dual personality, whirling from tenderness to brusqueness, who endured so much anguish in order to bring the gift of laughter to millions. Although vilified by Ziegfeld and assailed by demons, Fields survived the cutthroat rigors of Broadway show biz to become a legendary American iconoclast and cultural icon.
WARHOLCAPOTE: A Non-Fiction Invention
by Rob RothAn enthralling play based on lost tapes between two cultural giants and friends—Andy Warhol and Truman Capote.In 1978 Andy Warhol and Truman Capote decided to write a Broadway play. Andy suggested that he record their private conversations over the period of a few months, and that these tapes would be the source material for the play. The tapes were then filed away and forgotten. Their play was never completed. Now, award-winning director Rob Roth brings their vision to life after a years-long search to unearth the eighty hours of tapes between two of the most daring artists of postwar America. WARHOLCAPOTE, based on words actually spoken by the two men, is set in the &’70s and &’80s, toward the end of their close connection and not too long before their untimely deaths. Their special, complex friendship is captured by Roth with bracing intimacy as they discuss life, love, and art and everything in between. Every word in the play comes directly from these two 20th century geniuses. The structure of the conversations springs from Roth&’s imagination.
WROL (Without Rule of Law)
by Michaela JefferyConvinced the world at large can’t be trusted to prioritize the well-being of adolescent girls in the event of a cataclysmic event (or just in general), a determined troupe of preteen “doomers” commit to preparing for survival in the post-collapse society they anticipate inheriting. When Maureen, Jo, Sarah, Vic, and Robbie sneak out at night to investigate an ominous hidden lair in the woods, they believe they have stumbled onto proof of what happened to a mysterious local cult that vanished over a decade ago. As they search for vital clues, examining small bones and dusty cans of food for signs of life, they fight to be understood in a world that seems to reject them. What they discover changes everything—eighth grade will never be the same. Part Judy Blume, part Rambo, this darkly comic coming-of-age story for complicated times is for any young woman who has ever been told that she is “too much,” or that what she fears is illegitimate, or that what she has to say is less important than keeping the peace.
Wagner and the Wonder of Art
by M. Owen LeeRichard Wagner's Die Meistersinger has always called forth superlatives from those who have fallen under its spell. Toscanini wanted to lay his baton down for the last time only after he had conducted a performance of it. Paderewski called it 'the greatest work of genius ever achieved by any artist in any field of human endeavour.' H.L. Mencken declared, 'It took more skill to plan and write it than it took to plan and write the whole canon of Shakespeare.'And yet Wagner's many-splendoured comedy has come under severe criticism in recent years for what has been called its 'dark underside,' its 'fascist brutality,' and its 'ugly anti-Semitism.' In Wagner and the Wonder of Art, renowned opera expert M. Owen Lee addresses that criticism. He also provides an introduction to the opera and an analysis that will surprise even those veteran operagoers who may not have explored the work's intricate structure and the emotional drama at its centre. The book includes the on-air commentary that Father Lee gave during the first radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera after the events of 9/11. He thought it necessary, after attempting to refute the charges leveled against Wagner's opera, to say something about its truthfulness, its life-affirming music, its insight into the madness that can destroy human lives, and its witness to the importance of art for the survival of our civilizations.