Abstract
This thesis brings together published materials that make the argument for an inclusivere-positioned vocal praxis in the actor training studio. It places the sonics of the speaker at the centre of the work as a site of resistance to the ideologies of social exclusion and the privileged assumptions in logocentric studio-based voice practice.
The publications make a case for the significance of the somatic and the sonic in their offer of alternatives to the privileges inherent in the production and dissemination of the word in its discursive form. Research in the voice studio reveals that when embodied vocality is active, the emergent ‘second text’ gives primacy to both orality and aurality and better destabilises logos as the dominant transmitter of knowledge.
The first article, written in 2014, examines the rationale that places interpretive textual enquiry at the heart of UK voice training. It gives recognition to the practitioner lineages that support it, some of which have not been previously included in academic discourse and offers ways to incorporate philosophical and epistemological criticality into future praxis.
The chapters in the 2018 monograph further delineate some of the practitioner lineages and the terms of engagement they have helped shape in UK and US based theatre and voice training. Utilising a dialogue between extant historical publications and author commentary, their principles of operation are both exposed and critiqued. In its provision of a critical relationship between historical lineage and social context, the monograph codifies an evidential basis upon which further investigation and challenge can rest.
The 2019 article, in which the sonics of gender and racial bias are critiqued, gives credence to a re-imagined, individuated process with potential for the engagement of wider diversity and inclusion in the training studio. It draws upon a range of research outputs from both scientific and humanities sources in its advocation of interdisciplinary rigour as a basis for change in both process and outcome.
The 2022 podcast workshop transcript builds on interdisciplinarity in a series of performative paradigms. The series underpins a process of collaborative and intersectional voicing and gives volition to a decolonised state of mind within studio praxis. By drawing attention to perceptual attitudes in both aurality and orality, it offers a range of materials by which to understand their impact and to develop future studio teaching and learning as a consequence.
Finally, the 2022 article highlights the significance of tutor and learner positionality in the studio. The pedagogical structures that reinforce unconscious bias are challenged, thereby, and a range of different sonics of expression are rendered emergent. This offers ways to recognise and celebrate the individual voice and foster the notion of voice as
knowledge-producing on its own terms and independent from its association with the order and rules of language.
| Date of Award | 28 Jul 2024 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | George Burrows (Supervisor) & Ben Macpherson (Supervisor) |