Actors trained during pandemic lack vocal power and range, says RSC leader
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Version 1 of 2. Daniel Evans says young drama graduates who learned voice work online missed out on the physical presence of theatre training Young actors who trained at drama school during the pandemic are struggling to project their voices and lack range because they were denied the crucial “experience of full vocal and physical presence” within a theatre, the co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has said. Daniel Evans said performing within the confines of bedrooms or kitchens, and reciting lines to cameras on laptops, had stunted the development of some actors’ vocal musculature. At RSC auditions, he said he had been struck by the number of actors, now in their mid-20s, struggling to project their voices – voices that sound strained and limited in range. He said: “In auditions, you notice those undergraduates who trained at drama schools during Covid and did a lot of their voice work on Zoom. Therefore, they’re in their bedrooms, they’re in their kitchens, speaking to cameras on laptops rather than in larger spaces or theatre spaces. The effect of that has been that some of those graduates from that period, their musculature hasn’t developed in the same way as someone who’s had a full three years in a larger space.” He added: “The vocal musculature – the muscles around the larynx, the throat, the breast, for example, the intercostal muscles – hasn’t perhaps been developed in the way that it might have, had we not been in a pandemic. So the actors can sound quite monotone. But, with the texts that we are dealing with – the great classical parts – one needs a great range.” Evans is the RSC’s co-artistic director with Tamara Harvey. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, but left early in 1994 to join the RSC. His work as an actor has spanned Shakespeare, Sondheim and Sarah Kane, at the RSC as well as the National Theatre and the Royal Court, among others. He has won two Olivier awards for his Sondheim performances. Despite Covid-related weaknesses in actors, Evans said it was still possible to sense potential talent: “One can see their curiosity, their need to be able to connect to the text.” The RSC is now working with such actors, offering them hands-on training in the “profound but fundamental skill of actors being able to use nothing but the tools of their body and their voice”, Evans said. The company recently announced it had appointed Patsy Rodenburg, one of the world’s leading voice experts, as its emeritus director of voice. The much-acclaimed veteran has worked with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, among other actors, and playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter. Her former students include Daniel Craig and Damian Lewis – as well as Evans. She is a renowned authority on Shakespeare and classical theatrical texts, inspiring actors with her belief in craft – “breath work, body and vocal preparation, in order to have great presence and impact when speaking”. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion She said she had long felt that many actors who have focused on film and television “haven’t got the sort of muscular presence and breath systems that they need to do great theatre”. “Covid was a watershed moment because I’ve been noticing this decline. That’s when you really saw, for instance, young people coming back from Covid not being able to make eye contact any more,” she said. “Live theatre requires that every actor awakens the audience with their presence, which is different on television and film. ‘Presence’ is connected to our body and our breath. But muscles that we need to be present are very quickly eroded. If you’re in front of a screen, you can mumble. Young actors are then just playing themselves because they don’t have to stretch anything or change their breath rhythm.” She added: “Shakespeare understood that every human being has a different breath rhythm. So you need a muscular understanding of changing your rhythm with the breath and the voice in order to play the role – as opposed to reduce the role to yourself.” Evans said: “As Patsy says, craft is a thing that you have to practise – and then forget about. It’s not like you’re on stage playing a character and thinking about your intercostal muscles … The technique, the craft, is the scaffolding, so that your voice can be free and clear. Clarity is key because, if the audience can’t hear you, what hope do they have of understanding these sometimes very knotty classical texts?” |