Santorini Voice Symposium“A Meeting of Voices and Minds”

July 5-12, 2009

Philosophers, voice theorists, Master Voice Teacher Kristin Linklater, and a group of professional actors familiar with the Linklater method will meet to discuss their experiences of the voice. Philosophers will lecture on phenomenological descriptions of the voice and Kristin Linklater will lead them and the group of actors through a practical application of the voice. �e actors will highlight the depth of Kristin’s work by using the Linklater Voice Technique to give voice to Ancient Greek myths. �e purpose of the Symposium—which will result in a book publication—is to examine and possibly unite theory and practice of the voice, expression, thought, and language.

Brief Project Description

Details

�e Symposium will be held from the morning of July 5 to the evening of July 12, 2009, in Santorini (�ira), one of the most beautiful of the Greek Cycladic Isles. Participants will reside at the Pension Carlos, a lovely, family-run hotel in the quiet town of Akrotiri on the southern slopes of the island, close to the excavations of the ancient Cycladic-Minoan city. �e owner of the Pension, Evangelia Matsadou, is a wonderful cook and will be providing breakfast and dinner throughout the week. All the activities in our program will be held near the Pension Carlos. Kristin Linklater will lead an introductory voice workshop for the philosophers. �is will serve as a laboratory for melding the mind and the body and provide the philosophers with a grounded experience of her voice training. �e philosophers will also have an opportunity to observe the actors engaged in in-depth Linklater work using texts from Ancient Greek myths. �e philosophers will present theories and thoughts on the phenomenology of the voice based on the work of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, W. E. B. DuBois, and Jacques Derrida. �e philosophers who plan to attend are:

• Walter Brogan, Villanova University, USA • Dawne McCance, University of Manitoba, Canada• Françoise Dastur, Paris-Sorbonne, France • Kevin Miles, Earlham College, USA• David Farrell Krell, DePaul University, USA / • Angelica Nuzzo, CUNY, USA / Florence, Italy Universität Freiburg, Germany • Mollie Painter-Morland, DePaul University, USA / University of Pretoria, South Africa

�e participating actors constitute an even more varied group. �e philosophers and actors will discuss their experiences and thoughts on the voice as they develop during the course of the symposium.

Daily Schedule

8:30 AM Breakfast (provided)10:00-12:30 Kristin Linklater leads all participants in a warm-up and introduces the philosophers to her voice technique.12:30-2:00 Lunch break, and time (if desired) for philosophers to schedule individual voice sessions with Designated Linklater Teacher, Susan Main.2:15-4:00 Each day one of the philosophers gives a 45 minute paper on the voice. Each presentation is followed by time for questions/clarifications.5:00-7:30 As the philosophers observe, Kristin Linklater leads the actors in more advanced Linklater work using texts from Ancient Greek myths.8:30 PM Group Dinner (provided), wrap-up of the day’s experiences.

I grew up in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. I trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. �e legendary Iris Warren was my voice teacher there. She had developed her own unique approach to training actors’ voices: from inside out rather than outside in. She said: “I want to hear the person, not the voice.” She took me on as a teacher trainee and I subsequently taught for six years at LAMDA. In 1963 I came to the United States and set up my private studio. Between 1964 and 1978 I worked as vocal coach at Stratford, Ontario, the Tyrone Guthrie �eatre, the first Lincoln Center Repertory Company, the Open �eater, the Negro Ensemble, the Manhattan Project etc. I was Master Teacher of Voice in the New York University Graduate �eatre Program (now the Tisch School of the Arts) from 1965 to 1978. In 1978 I was a co-founder, with Tina Packer, of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. I left New York for the Berkshires with my son Hamish who was two years old. I lived and worked there for the next twelve years and then moved to Boston in 1990 where I taught at Emerson College till 1996. While based in Boston I created and co-directed with Carol Gilligan the Company of Women, an all-female Shakespeare company. We ran workshops for women and girls and produced two all-women plays: Henry V and King Lear. In the fall of ’97 I moved back to New York City as Professor of �eatre Arts at Columbia University. I have acted: Shakespeare (King Lear, Lady Macbeth, Maria, Queen Margaret, Emilia etc), a few contemporary roles (Collected Stories and some new plays), experimental productions based on Clytemnestra and Ovid’s Metamorphoses and most recently Euripides’ Hecuba. I have written two books: Freeing the Natural Voice first published in 1976 by Drama Publishers and now revised and expanded and re-published in a completely new format; and Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice (pub: 1992 TCG). I have written several articles on voice. I have lectured and given workshops in the U.S., the UK, Europe and Russia. I have trained teachers in my methods who teach in a majority of the actor-training programs in the U.S., Australia, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Finland, Spain and Russia.

Kristin Linklater on the voice:

�e voice is a human instrument. It is not merely a musical instrument, though it certainly is that too. It is not merely a utilitarian tool that facilitates our daily existence, though it does that too. �e voice is composed of three to four octaves of speaking notes that can express the full gamut of human emotion and communicate all the subtleties and nuances of thought. Its great value is in the directness and immediacy of its communication and in how much it reveals about the person who speaks. �is is also its danger. �e voice learns early in life how to prevaricate, how to defend, how to mask the truth.

�e exploration of one’s own voice is the search for the ring of truth, something natural and real that began with vital authenticity in the first breath and the first cry. �e search can be a psycho-physical drama, a poem, a song, and talk, talk, talk. Talking about breathing and then breathing, talking about emotion, admitting emotion, feeling the feelings of breath and emotion; sensing the vibrations in the body: vibrations flowing through bones, reverberating in the ribcage, the cheek-bone cavities, the nose-bone corridors, the sinus chambers and the great dome of the skull. �e voice voyages from the inner geography of neural pathways, organs, mind, impulse and consciousness carrying the fragile vessel of the psyche, crowded with words made flesh, on sound-waves and ripples of thought, traveling out to find the ear of another consciousness housed in another body. �at is, we talk. And we listen. And when this works well it is the stuff of a healthy personal existence. When the voice is blocked, held back, choked, suppressed, life gets blocked too.

�e Linklater Voice Method

Increase Physical Awareness Deepen Relaxation & Breath AwarenessIncrease Awareness of Vibrations and their AmplificationsFree and Open the Channel for Sound Explore Resonance & Articulation Connect Emotions, Impulses and �ought to SoundIncrease Vocal Range & Deepen Emotional RangeApply Techniques to the Spoken Word

During this week-long symposium you will be introduced to the methodology developed by world-renowned voice teacher Kristin Linklater, designed to ‘free the natural voice’. She will offer a progression of exercises designed to free, develop, and strengthen your voice. You will be given tools to:

Kristin Linklater on her background:

DAVID FARRELL KRELL is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. He was Chair of Department from 1989 to 1992 and founding director of the DePaul Humanities Center in 1999. He also taught literature and philosophy at the Universities of Essex, England, and Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Mannheim, Germany. He has written eleven scholarly books and translated six volumes of philosophy. Among his books are: �e Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God (Indiana University Press, 2005), �e Purest of Bastards: Works of Mourning, Art, and Affirmation in the �ought of Jacques Derrida (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), Contagion: Sexuality, Disease, and Death in German Idealism and Romanticism (Indiana, 1998), �e Good European: Nietzsche’s Work Sites in Word and Image, co-authored with Donald L. Bates (University of Chicago Press, 1997; German-language edition from Knesebeck Verlag, 2000), Archeticture: Ecstasies of Space, Time, and Body (State University of New York [SUNY] Press, 1997), and Lunar Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry, Fiction, and �ought (Chicago, 1995). He has published some ninety articles in learned journals and anthologies on subjects ranging from the Presocratics and Plato, through German Idealism, to contemporary European philosophy, and on themes such as metaphysics, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and the literary text. He is editor and translator of a wide range of books and articles by Martin Heidegger, including Basic Writings, Nietzsche, and Early Greek �inking. His most recent academic book, to be published by SUNY Press in 2008, is an annotated translation into English of Friedrich Hölderlin’s �e Death of Empedocles. He has written short stories and screenplays and has published three novels with SUNY Press: �e Recalcitrant Art: Diotima’s Letters to Hölderlin and Related Missives, 2000; Son of Spirit, 1997; and Nietzsche: A Novel, 1996.

ALESSANDRO FABRIZI is a theatre director and actor. He teaches voice at the “Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D’Amico” in Rome and is Faculty Member of the Actors’ Center of New York. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Stromboli Project, a summer theatre institute on the Aeolian island of Stromboli, Italy. Among his latest productions as theatre director are: Musicaromanzo, by and with Nada Malanima (Parma, Teatro del Parco, March 2008), Bartleby the Scrivener at the Blue Heron Arts Center, New York (Fall 2005) and Studio per Tre Novelle dal Decameron for the Anagni Medieval �eatre Festival (Italy, July 2006). He has held seminars on "Movement & Text" at the University of Chicago, Dartmouth University, Butler University (Indianapolis), Columbia University (New York), University of Long Island, the Blue Heron Arts Center and the Actors Movement Studio (New York). He recently directed the Actors' �esis of the MFA program at the School of Performing Arts of Columbia University, New York (Metamorphoses – Ted Hughes’ Tales From Ovid, Fall 2006). As a filmaker he has directed the short film E se... (2001), and the documentary Giving Voice – Kristin Linklater, 15 Actors and 7 Tales from Ovid (World Video Production). In cinema, he has collaborated with Anthony Minghella (�e Talented Mr. Ripley), Tom Tykwer (Heaven) and Fatih Akin (Solino) as supervisor of the Italian dialogues of those movies and as dialect coach (for Jack Davenport, Giovanni Ribisi, Cate Blanchet and Barnaby Metsurat). As an actor he played the role of Sergeant Baggio in �e Talented Mr Ripley and the role of Inspector Alberto Cerutti in �e International (USA release August 2008) directed by Tom Tykwer.

SUSAN MAIN is an actress and Designated Linklater Voice Teacher based in New York City. She currently serves on the faculties of the Actor’s Studio MFA program at Pace University, the Linklater Center for Voice and Language, and the Larry Singer Studios. Susan is the co-founder and co-director of the Stromboli Project, a summer theatre institute on the Aeolian island of Stromboli, Italy. She has taught voice and/or movement on the faculties of New York University, Emerson College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston Conservatory. Susan also works actively as a private vocal coach both in New York City and abroad, regularly conducting voice workshops in New York, Italy and Australia. Her students include politicians, corporate executives, Broadway, film and television actors. At present, she is the vocal coach for a piece for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s 25th Anniversary Season, debuting in 2008 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She has served as a voice and movement coach to theatre companies in Italy and Portugal. In 2005, she co-produced and served as script supervisor on the documentary Giving Voice – Kristin Linklater, 15 Actors and 7 Tales from Ovid, filmed in Stromboli, Italy, featuring world-renowned voice teacher Kristin Linklater. Susan holds an MFA in �eatre Education specializing in voice and movement from Boston University.

Brief Bios of Symposium Organizers:

SALOME M. KRELL is an actress based in New York City. She recently returned from Stromboli, Italy where she appeared as Aphrodite in Per Bacco - 6 Stories from Ted Hughes’ Tales from Ovid, at the Anfiteatro Eos. She was also recently seen Off-Broadway at �eater Row as Sally Wright in the NYC premiere of MyWandering Boy, directed by John Gould Rubin. She has appeared in productions at the Ohio �eatre, Atlantic �eatre Studio, Bank St. �eatre, Manhattan �eatre Source, and the Gene Frankel �eatre, among others. National tours include Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast. She originated the role of Agnes in �e Ballad of Round Eyes, which premiered at the American �eatre of Actors and was later produced in Chicago. She has appeared in a number of short films and in Law & Order: SVU. She was co-founder of The Open Door Mime Company which performed and taught workshops in New York City schools and also helped co-found The Phronesis Group, a counter-terrorism think-tank. Salomé is fluent in three languages and has conversational knowledge of a few others. She has a passion for travel, languages, people and cultures. She is a graduate of the theater program at Northwestern University.