ABSTRACT
The advent of new scientific tools has increased our ability to understand the human voice in action, and actors can use this information to develop and sharpen this amazing tool in your Actor’s Palette. The training and development of your vocal instrument is generally divided into voice, speech, and singing (also called voice for the sake of classes so this can be confusing). At higher levels of voice training, these are each taught in separate classes or private lessons. Perhaps you’ve heard that acting is 80 percent voice and speech. When Stanislavsky played Othello as a young man, he asked the famous Italian actor Tomasso Salvini (whose performance of Othello was considered a work of genius) for his advice. Salvini repeated, “Voice, Voice and more Voice.”2 Shakespeare’s advice to the players in Hamlet, and thereby to actors speaking his text, is:
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.3
