Day 6: First Day of Cicely Berry

Today was the first official day exploring Cicely Berry's vocal technique. It was also my last Madipalooza (See the picture to the right), which I was lucky enough to attend with two of the fiercest ladies I know.

While her book, Voice for the Actor and From Word to Play do not have nearly as many exercises as Linklater, I have found a lot of her more theoretical/big picture work intriguing and relevant so a few of my blog posts will be dedicated to my thoughts and musings on these ideas.

The first idea I came across that I found extremely relevant to this project was in Berry's From Word to Play in which she argues that women lost their power until the first alphabet was formed. She describes how men have always been straight ahead thinkers, while women think more inclusively. This one difference changed the way they communicated. With the alphabet, things could be recorded in a more linear and precise way, which was male focused. Females, with their many duties, are more likely to communicate orally. Thus a male dominated society raged on.

While I do agree with Berry that women have been at a disadvantage since the dawn of time, I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea. It seems quite extreme to blame the entire system of gender inequality on the alphabet. It also raises many questions because the argument is based a lot on stereotypes. What about the men who are not linear thinkers? Aren't there females who do not think inclusively? I, as well as a lot of stage managers I know, are extremely linear thinkers. We like order and thrive with to-do lists. However, I am also extremely passionate about inclusion and diversity and this is the type of theatre I want to work more on in my post-grad career. So while it may be easy to point the blame at the alphabet, I do not think it is extremely logical.

She continues that although the division is not as applicable now, as women are now taking on roles in business, politics and law. However, there is still a complexity to the organization of language. One of the articles I found that related to this point extremely well was "Executive Women, Finding (and Owning) Their Voice" and "Women, Find Your Voice"(find the links to these articles on the 8 Inspirational Pieces page). One of the biggest pieces of advice was using your voice strategically. I think this relates to Berry's idea because men are extremely good at being precise and direct when they speak. Often times women get caught up with just being heard at all and have the tendency to ramble/ are more descriptive with their language. I want to strive to be precise and specific in production and design meetings because I think this will earn more respect from the entire team. If we focus on this and the way we things (i.e. by not apologizing before we speak), we will be able to show we are a strong member of the team with valuable contributions.

Obviously the coffee and apologizing challenges did not work as well as I had hoped last week. This week's challenge is to choose five articles (check for two of them mentioned above) or videos I have found most useful in my research and share them on this website.

Tomorrow I will be exploring Berry's relaxation and breathing exercises.

Chelsea Janke