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The human voice TABLE OF CONTENTS

General information regarding the performance 3

Section 1 - Research 4 About the writer of the play - 5 Research for 6 Themes explored in the play 8

Section 2 - Inspiration 10 Set inspiration 11 Light inspiration 13

Section 3 - The process 15 About the character of the play 16 Set making 17 3d Exports 19 Experimentation with the window and shadows 21 Lighting plan 24 Focus list 25 Cue list 27

2 The Human Voice INFO LIST

Project Name: The Human Voice

Production Company: Open Arts Theatre

Venue: Space

Venue Address: Kosti Palama 12-14, 1096 Nicosia

Premiere: Saturday 4 February 2017

Written By: Jean Cocteau

Director: Athinetta Kasiou

Set Designer: Lydia Mandridou

Costume Designer: Lydia Mandridou

Lighting Designer: Karolina Spyrou

Sound Designer: Andreas Trachonitis

Lighting Operator: Achilleas Mouskis

Photography: Stelios Kallinikou

Video: Natassa Charalambous

CONTACT LIST

Name Role Phone Email

Athinetta Kasiou Director 99 461186 [email protected]

Lydia Mandridou Set / Costume 99 585162 [email protected] Designer

Karolina Spyrou Lighting 99317603 [email protected]. Designer cy

Achilleas Mouskis Lighting 96 705965 [email protected] Operator

3 The Human Voice RESEARCH

In every theatre project I take on, I like to find out as much as I can about the writer, the play (past performances, reviews), as well as the themes the play explores. This part of the process never changes for me. “The Human Voice” provided me with an opportunity to discover out how famous the play is and how Cocteau’s life influenced his work. A familiar everyday object, the telephone, can be used as a means of transmitting dramatic essence. The exploration of nostalgia of a lost love and communication can be used to provide a reflection of our own time.

4 The Human Voice JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963) “Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. He was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the Russian Ballet Company of , and was active in many art movements, but always remained a poet at heart. His films reflect this fact. Cocteau was also a homosexual, and made no attempt to hide it.Cocteau made about twelve films in his career, all rich with and surreal imagery. He is now regarded as one of the most important avant-garde directors in cinema.” http:// Cocteau as a young man in www.longbeachopera.org/2016-season/la-voix-humaine the Twenties. Credit: REX

Cocteau with Salvador Dali in 1923 Credit: REX “Cocteau's fascination with the rejected lover was not unique to Voix, but may extend back to his own love affair with the young , who died suddenly at the age of twenty.”(Keith Clifton) https://www.erudit.org/revue/ cumr/2001/v22/n1/1014499ar.pdf

Cocteau was described as : “passionate observers of women” (Benjamin lvry, (20th Century Composers) ) “Cocteau… whirled through life like an overgrown, opiated poodle, irritating as many people as he astonished, … the discourse of camp is evident in numerous ways, from his dandian dress to his outrageous films that pre- a n d p o s t - d a t e t h e D a d a movement.” (Benjamin lvry ,Francis Cocteau at his home in in 1955 Credit: REX Poulenc (20th Century Composers))

“Cocteau, above all, intended to promulgate a new form of art, one free from Romantic and Impressionistic trappings” (Keith Clifton) https://www.erudit.org/revue/cumr/ 2001/v22/n1/1014499ar.pdf

"Cocteau utilized his art as a personal exorcism or protection against reality instead of as an affirmation of knowledge” “microcosm of his mental structures” "Cocteau's theatre provides a much fuller, more complex insight into his mind than his films do.” (Lydia Crowson, The aesthetics Of Jean Cocteau)

5 The Human Voice ABOUT THE PLAY

"Absolute silence ... accounts for the majority of the supposed conversation of the lover.” Jean Cocteau: opium, eroticism and the dark despair of

“Alone in her chaotic bedroom, a dishevelled woman clutches the receiver of a Bakelite telephone. As the call is repeatedly cut off or Directed by crossed or the operator interrupts, she does everything she can to Performed by Halina keep her lover on the other end of the line. Reijn What matters to La voix humaine ’s impact is the ability to evoke the peculiar agony of losing love, expressed through the prism of the homosexual sensibility, with its ingrained streak of hysterical self- dramatisation and emotional masochism. In this respect, La voix humaine belongs alongside the plays of , the films of Pedro Almodóvar, and the ballads of Dusty Springfield as an exposure of the dirty linen of a woman's inner life, in which dignity goes by the board. Elle’s tactics are craven rather than heroic, and for all the genuine pain behind her isolation and desolation, Cocteau does not sentimentalise her behaviour: “the actress must give the impression of bleeding,” he wrote in a preface to the published text, “ of losing blood like a Claire Booth Credit: Polly Thomas limping beast, and ending the action in a room full of that blood.” For Cocteau, the play grew out of an even more intense period of crisis. It was written shortly after opium addiction had led him to detox in a rehab clinic, in the malestrom of a turbulent affair with a needy young writer Jean Desbordes, who would end up leaving Cocteau for a woman, joining the Maquis and dying after ghastly torture under the Gestapo. Desbordes was only one of a succession of such troubled young men who passed through Cocteau’s life .All too often, Cocteau was the one who was dumped. Some saw it as raw confessional: during a preview, the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard caused a great stir when he half-jokingly shouted from his seat “Obscene! Enough! It’s Desbordes on the other end of the line!” More objective critics felt that its naturalism indicated that the avant- gardiste Cocteau was selling out to commercialism – what was he doing, for instance, exploiting the trope of the telephone conversation, a clichéd feature of every tu’penny boulevard comedy of the 1920s? Conservatives, on the other hand, deplored that anything so vulgar should be staged at the Comédie-Francaise, otherwise home to the Ho-Jung in The Human Voice. Photo by Ed Krieger classical formalities of Racine and Molière. The net result of this controversy was the biggest popular success of Cocteau’s mercurial career to date – one that has persisted. Despite its provenance, La voix humaine shouldn’t be camped up: it’s too honest for that. It portrays a very ordinary romantic situation with sincerity and acumen and like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra or Sunset Boulevard ’s Norma Desmond, Elle emerges as the archetype of the woman who will stop at nothing to keep her man, even if it means her own destruction. Hardline feminists may find the implications of its stance unpalatable, but time has proved that La voix humaine shines a harsh clear light into a psychological darkness that can’t be ignored or gainsaid.”(Rupert Christiansen http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/ what-to-see/jean-cocteau-opium-eroticism-and-the-dark-despair-of-la- voix-hum/ )

______La Voix Humaine is not so much a monologue as the audible half of a dialogue.

6 The Human Voice “A woman. A broken heart. A telephone. It is late at night and a distraught woman is on the phone with her former lover. Tomorrow he intends to marry

someone else; however, tonight her hopes cling to their final conversation.” (http:// www.longbeachopera.org/2016-season/la-voix-humaine )

“Cocteau's text, vague and emotionally charged, is half silence, half sound, with large sections of the script filled with ellipses, creating wordless, unspoken moments. The unheard voice is that of the male lover, who remains mysterious and enigmatic, his significance to the plot entirely filtered through Elle. Certainly Cocteau was aware that such a work would present tremendous challenges for the performer, and so he employed another mute character, the telephone itself. Far from serving as a mere prop, the phone becomes at once the final palpable link between the two former lovers, a phallic symbol, and a possible agent of suicide.”(Keith Clifton,https://www.erudit.org/en/ journals/cumr/2001-v22-n1-n1/1014499ar/) “…essential element in Cocteau's dramatic method, the technique of fragmentation…In many ways, Voix transforms the elliptical, fragmented medium of the telegram-one of Cocteau's most characteristic forms of expresssion—into spoken form.” (Crowson, The Aesthetic of Jean Cocteau) About Cocteau's Play______“Cocteau's experiments with the human voice peaked with his 1930 play La Voix humaine (The Human Voice). The telephone proved to be the perfect prop for Cocteau to explore his ideas, feelings, and "algebra" concerning human needs and realities in communication. La Voix humaine is deceptively simple — a woman alone on stage for almost one hour of non-stop theatre speaking on the telephone with her departing lover. It is full of theatrical codes harking back to the Dadaists' Vox Humana experiments after World War One, Alphonse de Lamartine's La Voix humaine, part of his larger work Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and the effect of the creation of the Vox Humana ("voix humaine"), an organ stop of the Regal Class by Church organ masters (late 16th century) that attempted to imitate the human voice but never succeeded in doing better than the sound of a male chorus at a distance. Reviews varied at the time and since but whatever the critique, the play represents Cocteau's state of mind and feelings towards his actors at the time: on the one hand, he wanted to spoil and please them; on the other, he was fed up by their diva antics and was ready for revenge.”(http://www.longbeachopera.org/2016-season/la-voix-humaine )

Almodóvar on the Verge of Cocteau's "La Voix humaine” “[Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown] Cocteau's play has been named as the source of inspiration for that film. In various interviews Almodóvar has explained that his original intention had been to adapt the play to the screen, but due to its brevity, he needed to expand the material to feature film length. This led him to devise a story of the forty-eight hours leading up to the phone call. In the process, said Almodóvar, "Cocteau's La Voix humaine had utterly disappeared from the text - apart from its original concept, of course: a woman sitting next to a suitcase of memories waiting miserably for a phone call from the man she loves” (Linda M. Willem http:// digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papers/223/ )

7 The Human Voice THEMES EXPLORED “We are struck by the epidemic of smartphone addiction we see around us and find a mirror in Cocteau’s La voix humaine. Here is a woman at her breaking point, holding the phone as her only lifeline and connection to human love. She represents the modern day soul, unaware that she’s woven herself into a cocoon of attachment and denial, and waiting for someone else to save her”(Laura Bohn https://nationalsawdust.org/event/opera-a-mouth-is-not-for-talking-la-voix-humainethe-burning-harp/4/)

the last time she will feel a connection within the disconnection of intimacy between them

“In 1939, French dramatist, Jean Cocteau, wrote La Voix Humaine in an attempt to investigate the difficulties in communication with the introduction of technology and absence of body language from conversation.” (Kylie Stephenson,http://aussietheatre.com.au/reviews/lost-in- translation-la-voix-humaine)

Review of the telephone in an 1887 edition of The Scientific American :“...the mysteriousness, the sense of material non-existence, of that part of the machine and its belongings that lies beyond one’s own instrument... I can imagine my friend at the other end of the line. But between us two there is an airy nowhere, inhabited by voices and nothing else – Hello land, I should call it. The vocal inhabitants of this strange region have an amazing vanishing quality... The consciousness of such an experience produces in sensitive men, I am sure, a sensation of nervous shock, somewhat akin to seasickness. And sometimes...you hear the confused murmur of a hundred voices. You catch more expressions from private conversations than your nerves can transmit to the central office of your brain; and if you are imaginative, you may undergo, as I have, a feeling as if you had a hundred astral bodies that were guiltily listening at as many keyholes...The telephone seems to you to have no visible agency...Your applications and complaints go over the wire to that one impersonal, impalpable voice.” ……………………..the line is disconnected

8 The Human Voice Philosopher Avital Ronell describes the telephone as “a machine that connects the voices of disconnected beings – in its power to re-separate voices, the telephone only temporarily connects voices.”

“Voice, Body, Technology: David Fuller on Cocteau-Poulenc’s “La Voix Humaine”! David Fuller writes: Cocteau’s La voix humaine is a play for a single actress, who speaks on the telephone to a lover who has left her. The audience hears only what is said by the woman. The main issues are about voice and the body: what can one hear in a voice; how do bodily presence and technological intervention affect how one speaks and what one hears. The speaker supposes she can hear in the voice whether one is lying – though she fails to hear in her lover’s voice a lie she discovers by other means; and she claims one can tell from the voice what a person is doing (‘J’ai des yeux à la place des oreilles’) – though her lover fails to penetrate lies about her actions that the audience sees she is telling. The play also raises issues about how the voice is affected by technology – both how one speaks (because speaking to an instrument, not a person; or because of hearing indirectly, through technological intervention); and whether the audience supposes it understands what it hears differently from the lover, because, as well as hearing the speaking voice, it sees the speaking body. The action also presents suicidal depression: the speaker describes treatment for a failed suicide attempt (with a drug overdose), and the play ends with her apparently strangling herself with the telephone cord – with her lover’s voice (‘J’ai ta voix autour de mon cou’). What can be heard in the voice may also, as her account of resisting treatment suggests, be a subject relevant to diagnosis. Cocteau stressed in his preface to the published play that he intended it as an aural-visual work, not a written text, and interpretation has therefore to take full account of the meanings of the performer’s vocal inflections and body language. The play is peculiarly difficult to read, principally because there is so much space for interpretative inflection: the performer has to decide what her fragmentary texts imply about what the audience does not hear, to which it understands her as responding. The audience glimpses one alternative perspective on the unheard lover, given by a woman who interrupts after listening on the telephone party-line. She takes (we discover by implication) a low view of him, indicating that he might be seen in terms quite other than those expressed by the woman through whose engagements the audience’s sense of him is otherwise filtered. Both audience and interlocutors receive unusually partial signals, especially for a conversation of such intimacy: audience – only fragments of the material usual in interpreting a dialogue; interlocutors – voice, with no body language, technologically filtered and addressing the listener through a mechanical surrogate. The play therefore embodies with particular intensity the degree to which interpretation depends on medium of communication and point of view.”(http://centreformedicalhumanities.org/voice-body-technology-david-fuller-on-cocteau-poulencs-la-voix-humaine/ )

“The telephone generates an absence acutely felt, and silence on the line makes her panic... the receiver almost becomes a second on-stage character…….. The telephone, an oddly powerful trope through which to theorize mourning……….La Voix humaine is a work centered on nostalgia and grief: nostalgia for lost love, lost youth, for what might have been. The telephone is the conduit for the end of a relationship with "l'homme inconnu" and, metaphorically, for the end of her life, whether literally or figuratively. "The telephone as an important mechanism of fantasy and pleasure in is attested to by the burgeoning canon of psychological case studies on so-called telephone neuroses, compulsive telephoning, and perverse telephoning.” (Ellis Hanson, The Telephone and Its Queerness)

The woman is left either to kill herself, or to live a life of loneliness and misery.

9 The Human Voice INSPIRATION

The Cambridge dictionary defines inspiration as: !(http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inspiration) 1.someone or something that gives you ideas for doing something !2.An inspiration is also a sudden good idea For me, inspiration is the collision of ideas, the search for the aesthetic vision for each performance. It is also about discovering common interests within the collaborators and how our work is influenced by other artists, each other and the natural world.

10 The Human Voice !

SET INSPIRATION

Reference images for the set :Lydia Mandridou

Cocteau describes the set as: “The stage, surrounded by red-painted frames and draperies, depict a woman’s room; a somber, bluish room: to the left, an unkempt bed, and to the right, a door ajar which leads to a white, illumined bathroom. In the center, on a partition, is a lop-sided, enlarged image of some masterpiece or a family portrait; the image appears slightly sinister. In front of the air vent, a low-backed chair and a small table: telephone, books, lamp which gives !off a cruel light. “ (Jean Cocteau, Théâtre, (Paris: Grasset, 1957) ! Lydia, the set designer, used as a starting point the drapes and the fact that the character’s surroundings were unkempt. We all wanted to explore concepts of visibility, but also keep her environment simple so the character’s psychological state would be explicit. We wanted to invoke a contemporary feel and to use objects that intimately connected with the character.

11 The Human Voice !

"Shirley: Visions of Reality” By Gustav Deutsch

https://www.yatzer.com/shirley-visions-of-reality-edward-hopper

THE NEIGHBORS by Arne Svenson “His projects are almost always instigated by an external or random experience which brings new objects or equipment into his life-in this case he inherited a bird watching telephoto lens from a friend.The grid structure of the windows frame the quotidian activities of the neighbors, forming images which are puzzling, endearing, theatrical and often seem to mimic art history, from Delacroix to Vermeer. The Neighbors is social documentation in a very rarified environment.” (http://arnesvenson.com/theneighbors.html )

The work of Arne Svenson (above) provided the framework around the set design, which was used to emphasise that the audience is looking in. It is like eavesdropping in a way, like neighbours listening in on the character’s conversation.

12 The Human Voice LIGHT INSPIRATION

Carl Jung “His shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations. “

Time moves in one direction memory in an another. William Gibson

“All shadows whisper of the sun. ” Emanuel Carnevali

13 The Human Voice I am fascinated by natural light and how it is altered and filtered by man-made constructions as well as how it always finds a way in. Cocteau describes the lighting in the script as “a lamp which gives off a cruel light”. This did not fit with our concept of the performance. I wanted to explore both moments of tenderness as well as frantic, intense, emotional moments. The lighting was intended to respond to her emotional states, through shapes created by light and shadows of things appearing and disappearing: catching a glimpse of the things that make up her world; to be open to interpretation and to affect the character subconsciously, the way natural light affects us all.

………………..a moment in time, a snapshot of despair………………

14 The Human Voice PROCESS

In any design process, it is essential to have a genuine understanding for what you are designing for. Without it the design will lack specificity. The process might be completely different every time or it might be a comfortable, familiar pattern which is altered and repeated. In designing for theatre, the parameters change every time; the script, the space, the collaborators. For me, it is essential to create an interpretation that is unique to the circumstances. How a production team choses to interpret and present each the play, is what makes the process exciting every time.

15 The Human Voice CHARACTER

Our interpretation of the character : a young contemporary woman, with a mobile phone, smoking. She does not care about her appearance and her surroundings.

"The pleasures of paranoia are not to be underestimated."Hanson, The Telephone and Its Queerness

the separation has had such a strong impact on her psyche that it is reflected in her face. what is finished, is finished

only means of connection with another person

Photos: Stelios Kallinikou

“Cocteau has provided no details concerning here background, social status,financial security, temperament, or real name. We know even less about her former lover, "l'homme inconnu." Even though he is the cause of her anxiety, he never appears on the stage, never speaks, never interjects.The character is thrust into the dramatic and emotional spotlight, where our sympathies are manipulated in her favor. We have been given no other choice. A lonely, isolated figure, with only the invisible audience for comfort, we assume the guise of voyeur, enchanted and confused by her often incoherent ramblings. Mysteries, vague recollections, and unspoken voices are in fact important aspects of Cocteau's text.” (Keith Clifton https://www.erudit.org/revue/cumr/2001/v22/ n1/1014499ar.pdf) ……………Breathing can be deceiving………

16 The Human Voice SET MAKING

The venue, which belongs to the director, offered us the freedom to change the whole space according to the needs of the design and the play. For this project, we worked in a very fluid manner, making all the decision regarding the set, in the venue itself. The architecture of the venue, influenced our ideas and we tried to incorporate and exploit elements of the venue. At the same time we tried to find a different solution for the space.

17 The Human Voice 18 The Human Voice 3d EXPORTS Part of the design process is the connection of a visual idea with a tangible object. Light is not tangible so it makes the connection more difficult. 3d drawings help me understand if my ideas will work, as well as, ‘sell’ them to the director. In this project I wanted to experiment with the idea of light as an outside force, to place all the light sources outside the visible acting area.

19 The Human Voice 20 The Human Voice WINDOWS AND SHADOWS

I wanted to explore the creation of shapes by blocking light sources. The three windows and the plant were an integral part of the design. No matter how much work is done before hand, it is in the actual venue that final decisions can be made. I tried a few alternatives with the shape and colour of the shadows created. The more abstract shadow of the curtain on the lower window, in combination with the lines formed from the shutters on the upstairs window, formed an interesting composition.

Only, you know, we talk, we talk, it never occurs to us that we’ll have to stop talking, hang up, returns to the emptiness, the darkness…. So… (Cocteau, The human Voice)

21 The Human Voice 22 The Human Voice Final looks.

23 The Human Voice LIGHTING PLAN

24 The Human Voice FOCUS LIST

Channel Dimmer Fixture Position Colour Focus Focus Notes Number Number 1 1 Profile Boom 152 Through the As big as possible stand S.L window soft focus, cut to the edges of the window 2 2 2 Fluorescent Warm tubes 3 3 Profile Floor Line end Very narrow line, stand S.L sharp focus across the final siting position 4 4 Profile Floor Low Side light As big as possible, stand S.L Across to the soft focus cut to radiator the sitting position in front of the radiator 5 5 Profile Boom 200 Through the Sharp focus to stand S.L window create a narrow curtain shadow of the curtain on the wall next to the telephone 6 6 Par Corridor Corridor Across, not to hit S.L the wall 7 7 Pc Floor 202 Uplight to the As big as possible, stand S.r plant to create to the plant only shadow 8 8 2 flood lights S.R 237 Through the General through window window the window 9 9 Par Inside Through the Through the blinds the window to create lines on window upstairs the wall upstairs on floor stands 10 10 Pc Boom 201 Uplight As big as possible. stand Bounce. General S.R wash for S.R. area 11 11 Profile Floor Across Side light, as big stand as it goes soft S.R focus, cut to the edges of the playing area

25 The Human Voice Channel Dimmer Fixture Position Colour Focus Focus Notes Number Number 12 12 Practical Placed Side uplight When she sits on upstairs next to the bed near the the bed opening upstairs 13 13 3 Fluorescent Placed Cold General light from tubes horizonta the corridor l outside outside the room the upstairs window upstairs 14 14 Fluorescent Placed Cold Through the blinds tube vertical to create lines on outside the wall the door upstairs

EQUIPMENT LIST

Number Fixture Type Power in watts Notes 5 Profile 25-50 575 2 Pc 1000 3 Par Short nose 300 2 Flood lights 500 6 Fluorescent tube Dimmable 2 warm, 4 cold 1 Practical Desk lamp 50 3 Boom stands

6 Floor stands

26 The Human Voice CUE LIST!

Cue Time in Time out Name Number Intensity Description / When 1 5 5 H.L. & 2 40% Before House opens Preset 13 100%

14 100%

2 5 5 House 13 100% Clearance Lights off 14 100%

3 0 0 She turns 11 40% No, this is not Doctor on the light Schmit. When the 13 100% actress turns on the light 14 100%

4 60 60 Follow cue 11 40% Lower door upstairs. 5 Follow cue 5 13 100%

14 10%

5 0 0 She turns 1 30% Ah! at last… it’s you. on the light When the actress turns 6 100% on the light 11 40%

13 100%

14 10%

6 60 60 Follow cue 1 30% Lower upstairs. 5 Follow cue 5 6 100%

11 40%

13 40%

14 10%

7 60 60 Addition 1 30% The bag?…

6 100%

10 40%

11 50%

13 40%

14 10%

8 160 180 Window 1 20% Putting on an act, me! Note:to reach that he 4 40% wants the! bag now!

27 The Human Voice Cue Time in Time out Name Number Intensity Descriptionwants the! bag / When now! 5 100% ! 10 35% ! ! 11 50% ! 13 40%

14 10%

9 3 3 Outside 1 30% I said can you hear me now 4 40%

5 60%

6 20%

8 50%

10 35%

11 50%

13 40%

14 10%

10 3 3 return 1 30% Follow cue 5

4 40%

5 60%

6 20%

10 35%

11 50%

13 40%

14 10%

11 20 120 Cold 4 50% Follow cue 6

10 30%

13 40%

14 10%

12 50 50 Plant 4 40% Me, wicked?

7 40%

10 30%

13 40%

28 The Human Voice Cue Time in Time out Name Number Intensity Description / When 14 40%

13 50 50 Upstairs 9 30% Hello, hello. She goes upstairs 10 30%

12 100%

13 80%

14 80%

14 180 180 Window 9 100% Hello! Ah! Darling! Is upstairs that you? … 10 30%

12 100%

13 70%

14 60%

15 300 300 Window off 10 30% You are kind, my darling ,,, 12 70%

13 70%

14 60%

16 0 0 Breakdown 3 100% Hallo! Hallo! She throws the ashtray 10 100%

13 70%

14 60%

17 80 80 The end is 3 100% When she comes closing in down 10 100%

13 20%

14 10%

18 115 115 Line 3 100% Well then … 19 10 10 Blackout Last cigarette 20 5 5 Curtain call 4 50%

9 50%

11 60%

21 5 5 H.L 2 40%

4 50%

9 50%

29 The Human Voice Cue Time in Time out Name Number Intensity Description / When 11 60%

13 70%

14 60%

30 The Human Voice