The Legacy of Kristin Linklater

Abstract

A few weeks before her death, Kristin Linklater gave what was to be her final presentation, online because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, entitled: ‘Methods of Performing Arts and the Pioneer Practices in This Discipline’. In this speech presented at a Forum of Theatre, Film and TV at the Shanghai Theatre Academy on training young performers, she emphasizes the need to ‘train the person who will become the actor before we can train the actor’ and she explores the necessity for truthful performance which the art of acting demands even more now that many performances are so closely observed through the lens and microphone.

This text of this short speech, and Kristin’s contribution to the development of voice practice, is contextualised through a personal tribute from Joan Mills, the Voice Director of the Centre for Performance Research, who knew Kristin for over thirty years and invited her many times to the Giving Voice international festival of voice in performance.

Notes

1 Giving Voice is an international festival, a celebration of the voice in performance and a project of the Centre for Performance Research (CPR). So far there have been fourteen editions over thirty years. www.givingvoice.org.uk

2 See: www.linklatervoice.com

3 Iris Warren and Michael Macowan collaborated to develop actor-training when they took over the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art LAMDA in 1951. They were inspired by the formative work of Jacques Copeau, Michael Saint-Denis and Litz Pisk and The Old Vic Theatre School, which had, as Linklater herself describes it, developed training designed to develop the ‘actor’s being into a sensitive, integrated, creative instrument’. Iris Warren had built her practice on the pioneering voice work of Elsie Fogerty, developing a series of exercises designed to balance technical knowledge and imagery and to move away from the notion of the ‘voice beautiful’ to a free and more natural sound.

4 Tina Packer, co-founder of Shakespeare & Company, was born in England and journeyed to the US in the early 1970s with the idea of creating and running a theatre company that merged the power suits of British actors and American actors: the spoken word and the physical body.

5 As well as the Giving Voice International Festival of Voice, the Centre for Performance Research has a portfolio of many other workshops, residential summer schools and retreats, conferences and community events. Kristin took part in eight of the fourteen Giving Voice festivals and was the Guest Teacher for one of the annual Summer Retreats we held at a residence in Druidstone, west Wales. King Lear was the subject of our explorations on the clifftops, shore, sea, caverns and the old gardens of the residential venue.

6 Tran Quang Hai and Kristin met at several Giving Voice editions. He is an ethnomusicologist originally from Vietnam who studied in France and worked at the National Centre for Scientific Research at the Musée de l’Homme. He is an expert in many varieties of overtone singing and plays many traditional instruments, including the spoons! He founded an online group exploring spoon players of the world: https://bit.ly/3pZYX4H.

7 Enrique Pardo, voice practitioner and theatre director, taught workshops over a period of many years for the CPR, including the summer retreat and for Giving Voice. Enrique was a founder member of the Roy Hart Theatre community in Maleragues. When Enrique left the Roy Hart Theatre, he created his own company, Pantheatre, based in Paris with Linda Wise. They founded the Myth and Theatre Festival which takes place in Maleragues, and he leads workshops and training in voice and choreographic theatre.

8 Cicely Berry (17 May 1926–15 October 2018) was a renowned British voice practitioner, director and Voice Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1969 to 2014. She was the author of a number of influential books on voice practice and worked all over the world teaching, giving workshops and lecturing during a long and distinguished career.

9 Zygmunt Molik (1930–2010) was a co-founder of Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, where he worked as an actor, researcher and teacher. He was responsible for vocal training at the Laboratory through which he developed a system for exploring voice through the body. He taught and spoke at conferences in the UK a number of times at the invitation of the CPR and met Kristin at Giving Voice in 1990.

10 Kristin Linklater’s teacher-training process is lengthy and rigorous. Those who are finally designated as Linklater teachers have undergone between three and five years of personal training. Since 1965 she trained over 200 teachers in her methods; they teach in a majority of the actor-training programs in the US, and in Australia, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Finland, Spain and Russia.

11 As the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic made a live event for Giving Voice’s thirtieth anniversary impossible, the CPR decided to ask practitioners and participants at any Giving Voice edition to send us a short video to celebrate the project’s history and share their memories and stories. These stories and songs will be woven into an online Voice Quilt reflecting the legacy of the Giving Voice festival over the past thirty years. The Linklater Centre told us that Kristin had discussed her contribution to the Voice Quilt a few days before she died, but sadly she had not yet made the video. We do have a short video she made for the 2015 edition of Giving Voice in Falmouth, when she was unable to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary. This will become part of the Voice Quilt on the CPR website.

1 Editor’s note: This was the ‘topic’ title of the first session of the Shanghai University League’s Forum for International Young Scholars – Forum of Theatre, Film and TV @ Shanghai Theatre Academy. It was held on 30–31 May 2020 and was convened by the Acting Department of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Kristin Linklater’s speech was the keynote for the opening day. We are not aware she gave any other title to this speech.