SCIENCE MEETING ART: VOCAL TECHNIQUE AND SPONTANEITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ACTING
SCIENCE MEETING ART: VOCAL TECHNIQUE AND SPONTANEITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ACTING

Summary/Abstract: In the contemporary theater, the actors needs to sound as normally and spontaneous as they do in everyday conversations. But in order to be heared by the audience in a large theater, they have to acquire voiceand speech skills. The search for an equilibrium between technique and emotional freedom is still one ofthe most important challenges that acting schools are facing. Bridging the creative, imaginative inner selfwith the skillful outer communicative one requires the most diverse contributions in an interdisciplinarydialogue combining physical disciplines like Alexander Technique or Yoga with the new insights into theworking of the mind, the body and the emotions provided by neuroscience. In the effort of shifting thecontrols from external, physical muscles to internal, emotional impulses I think that the scientificperspective offered by Antonio Damasio can give a great deal of help. The way in which this recentresearch can provide new approaches of the functioning of the human voice in the theater, a voice that isin direct contact with emotional impulses, is the main interrogation of this article.

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