Developing a Unique Actor’s Voice
Discovering one’s unique voice as an actor is an intensely personal odyssey that separates the easily forgettable from the truly unforgettable, injecting irreplaceable individualism into every role they undertake. This is a voice that does not come through mimicry, but by careful investigation into one’s own truths and habits and idiosyncrasies of the way in which one sees and tells about the world. By way of warm-up, text analysis and physical exploration, actors develop layers of resonance, rhythm and inflection that feel theirs. It also requires patience and curiosity — the first discoveries can sometimes seem underbaked or strange, but over time its contents become part of a signature style that makes you more true. The fact is: a unique voice ends up being an actor’s most powerful weapon to communicate nuance, and power in a way that no one else can replicate.
Basic training of the actor’s voice must start with freeing itself from the restrictions imposed by societal conditioning and learned habits which inhibit natural processes. A lot of performers begin by identifying vocal patterns imposed by culture, training or self-consciousness and slowly working to release tensions in the jaw, throat and breath that inhibit flow. Exercises in resonating chambers, articulation and even the possibilities of variation within pitch not only expand range, but keep that range at one with emotional centers; thus technique cannot drag itself organless over truth. When the walls evaporate, actors are freer to choose how words come out of their mouths, and sound influenced by personal history and imagination. This vocal honesty is made manifest in the body, a complete voice from squatting rounded back and tucked pelvis to raised chin, open chest and extended torso.
One of the biggest obstacles to developing a signature voice is how to strike a balance between uniqueness and adaptability since actors are required to tailor their performances in service of different characters in their lives’ work without shedding the oil-weeping willow stinkbug at one’s core. The best can do so by connecting a transformation to their own voice — and using the voice as a lodestone, grounding the most extreme characterizations in humanity. Working on a script focusing on substitutions and personalizing the text serves to teach actors how to look at lines through their own eyes, giving them voice with their unique cadence based on perspective. This method ensures no universal delivery, exchanging interpretations that will shock the directors and audiences with new ideas. And over time, this balance allows performers to slip seamlessly into the skins of wildly disparate characters while remaining unmistakably themselves — the weight, you hope, they’ll carry throughout a long career.
Moreover, working to create a unique voice also creates deep awareness and self-acceptance as actors embrace the elements of their instrument they once saw as hindrances. When embraced completely, timbrel tics or trace accents, odd meters and unusual tempos.” Choose your language. “As you said yesterday: You don’t use that tempo. it uses you.” And then some. The self-embrace gives off a glow of confidence, emboldening further risks and greater openness on stage or screen. It’s also eminently humanizing, for in understanding our own complexity we illuminate the inner worlds of others, resulting in performances that are full of detail and empathy. In company with other artists, this unique separate-ness has served the group distinction as a band of “one”, while dividing into a chorus strengthens ensemble work in contrasted vocal landscapes.
Ultimately, the fully realized actor’s voice creates a connection between personal truth and one universal experience to which the audience can relate beyond even the specific role. When talents perform from that real place, their work transcends time and becomes something universal that can cut across cultures, languages, and generations. This voice develops over the course of a career, it matures with time and lived experience, always evolving, which is why Levitin remains fresh and his music continues to be meaningful. For talent committed to the craft, tending to their unique voice is never over because it manifests work that does more than keep us amused and entertained; it reveals inexhaustible variations of human expression. (This belief) takes acting from a career to a spiritual vocation in which each utterance becomes an expression of who we are,” Turnbull said.
