Decolonizing Listening: Towards an Equitable Approach to Speech Training for the Actor.

This article confirms and deepens an understanding of the negative impact of teaching culturally embedded speech standards to actors who are “othered” by a dominant “somatic norm” within the performing arts. The author analyzes evidence from a three-year longitudinal study of actors within a UK conservatory in relation to the critical frame of the somatic norm and colonized listening practices in the performing arts. The author identifies conscious and unconscious bias within traditional training methods and proposes a decolonizing approach to listening within foundational speech training. The ideological shift outlined follows the “affective turn” in the humanities and social sciences and moves away from the culturally embedded listening at the core of “effective” speech methods, which focus solely on clarity and intelligibility. The outcome of this research is a radical performance pedagogy, which values the intersectional identities and linguistic capital of students from pluralistic backgrounds. The revised curriculum offers an approach to affective speaking and listening that assumes an equality of understanding from the outset, and requires actors, actor trainers, and, ultimately, audiences to de-colonize their listening ears

Finding a Way: More Tales of Dyslexia and Dyspraxia in Psychophysical Actor Training

This article proposes a radical paradigm shift for actor training and voice training. Using heuristic practice-based research findings, the article highlights how progressive education methods at the heart of psychophysical actor training dysconsciously discriminate against students who are dyslexic and/or dyspraxic learners. It discusses the psychological and cognitive impact of experiential learning models on neurodiverse acting students and challenges the widely held “truths” in this training. The article draws on the philosophical framework proposed by Jacques Rancière in his discussion of the emancipatory pedagogy of Joseph Jacotot, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, to offer an alternative perspective on actor training that starts from an assumption of equality, rather than a position where equality is a distant objective. The author argues that it is possible to reject a hierarchical expert-novice approach to training and implement a process of collaboration with students as fellow artists. The article reviews the position of knowledge within psychophysical training, and the author rejects the use of a universal language of experiences. The author proposes that, by trusting the student’s ability to learn what is needed, actor trainers can adopt a position of ignorance in relation to a student’s own self-knowledge. Finally, the author incorporates this work into a revised vocal pedagogy that embraces neurodiversity and effectively engages all students’ will to learn with full attention

Decentering Listening: Toward an Anti-Discriminatory Approach to Accent and Dialect Training for the Actor

This article reports on the findings of practice-based research into the development of anti-discriminatory accents and dialects training for actors with diverse intersecting identities. The author reviews an earlier strand of research into speech training within a UK conservatory that identified a bias toward Received Pronunciation reinforced by colonized listening practices. This article explores the impact of those listening practices on accent and dialect training. The author responds to the challenges inherent in providing training that both develops high-level skills and meets industry needs, while aiming to center the experiences of somatically othered students. The author develops their previous decolonizing model into a decentering framework for an approach to training actors that draws on critical pedagogy and asks students to cross the border from the conservatory into the community. This approach to accent and dialect training builds on verbatim and documentary theatre-making techniques, resulting in a practice that values empathy, listening, embodied practice, and autonomy, and the approach allows actors to perform “multiple authenticities,” while offering the potential for political insurgency within the performing arts industries

Chapter Three The Expressive Voice in Performance: Chekhov’s Techniques for Voice and Singing in Michael Chekhov Technique in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways.

In this chapter, I examine archival evidence of voice practice during, and since, the time of Chekhov’s Dartington Studio. The results of this examination suggest a lack of integration between approaches to voice and Chekhov’s techniques during his lifetime and point the way towards an interdisciplinary model for the ongoing development of new pathways in this area. I will discuss two examples of interdisciplinary approaches to voice and Chekhov that have emerged in the early part of the 21st Century and show how these approaches offer a model for further interdisciplinary exploration of Chekhov for Voice and Singing

Michael Chekhov Technique in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways

The culmination of an innovative practice research project, Michael Chekhov in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways draws on historical writings and archival materials to investigate how Chekhov's technique can be used across the disciplines of contemporary performance and applied practice. In contrast to the narrow, actor training-only analysis that dominated 20th-century explorations of the technique, authors Cass Fleming and Tom Cornford, along with contributors Caoimhe McAvinchey, Roanna Mitchell, Daron Oram and Sinéad Rushe, focus on devising, directing and collective creation, dramaturgy and collaborative playwriting, scenography, voice, movement and dance, as well as socially-engaged and therapeutic practices, all of which are at the forefront of international theatre-making. The book collectively offers a thorough and fascinating investigation into new uses of Michael Chekhov's technique, providing practical strategies and principles alongside theoretical discussion