Voice and the Actor

"Speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life." Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instincts have been crippled from birth by many processes--by the conditioning, in fact, of a warped society.So an actor needs precise exercise and clear understanding to liberate his hidden possibilities and to learn the hard task of being true to the 'instinct of the moment'.As her book points out with remarkable persuasiveness 'technique' as such is a myth, for there is no such thing as a correct voice.There is no right way--there are only a million wrong ways, which are wrong because they deny what would otherwise be affirmed.Wrong uses of the voice are those that constipate feeling, constrict activity, blunt expression, level out idiosyncrasy, generalize experience, coarsen intimacy.These blockages are multiple and are the results of acquired habits that have become part of the automatic vocal equipment; unnoticed and unknown