Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Staging the voice : towards a critical vocal performance pedagogy Derek Mudd Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Mudd, Derek, "Staging the voice : towards a critical vocal performance pedagogy" (2014). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3045. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3045 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. STAGING THE VOICE: TOWARDS A CRITICAL VOCAL PERFORMANCE PEDAGOGY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy In The Department of Communication Studies by Derek Mudd B.A., Morehead State University, 1994 M.F.A, Louisiana State University, 2007 August 2014 For Tonya Mudd Robbins (1969-2009) and Reuben Mitchell (1981-2012) ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation advisor and friend Ruth Laurion Bowman for providing guidance above and beyond the call of duty. I would like to thank my committee members: John Fletcher for being a mentor at conferences and a fantastic scene partner; Rachel Hall for introducing me to Cultural Studies and providing excellent feedback on assignments; Loretta Pecchioni for “mucking in” as we call it in the theatre and for your thoughtful and inspiring scholarship; and to Wilfred Major for your time and insight. Additionally, I would like to thank the members of my comprehensive exam committee, which included Ruth, John, Rachel, Wilfred, and also Nathan Crick and Michael Bowman. Much thanks to my other professors in the Department of Communication Studies, Patricia Suchy, Tracy Stephenson Shaeffer, and Stephanie Houston Gray; and to our fantastic department secretaries, Ginger Conrad, Lisa Landry, Tonya Thigpen, and Donna Sparks. I would like to thank professors in other departments at LSU, including Francois Raffoul of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Patricia O’Neill of the School of Music, and the late Miles Richardson of the Department of Anthropology and Geology. I would like to thank so many of my classmates, including Sarah Jackson, Brianne Waychoff, Travis Brisini, Danielle McGeough, Jade Huell, Brandon Nicholas, Joe Rhodes, Rya Butterfield, Dre Bettencourt, John Lebret, Rebecca Walker, Holly Vaughn, Benjamin Powell, Benjamin Haas, Lyndsay Michalik, Eddie Gamboa, Emily Graves, and Andrea Vickery. Thanks to my dear office mates Ariel Gratch and Michael Rold for their support and teaching ideas. And then there are those students who were dissertating by the time I started in the program who have been amazing comrades, supporters, mentors, and shoulders to cry on: Lisa Flanagan, Gretchen Stein Rhodes, and Melanie Kitchens. iii Big thanks to my other teachers over the years: Travis Lockhart, Steven Schultz, Les Wade, Rinda Frye, Laura Wayth, Christine Menzies, and my teacher in all things professional, Laura Wiegand. Also, to my friend of nearly thirty years, Jessica Hester, who told me one day about this interesting area of study called Performance Studies that she thought I might like. Thanks to my mom and dad, and to my brother Brett who always knows how to make me laugh. And, finally, to my partner and husband Christopher Krejci for coming with me on this crazy journey, whose thoughtful responses to my ideas for this dissertation have been invaluable. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER ONE BETRAYED BY OUR TONGUES.................................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO CULTIVATING THE VOICE: U.S. VOICE TRAINING FROM 1827-1923 ................................................................................28 CHAPTER THREE A NEW WAY OF SPEAKING: KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI ON VOICE ............................................................................61 CHAPTER FOUR JERZY GROTOWSKI: PERSONAL-SCENIC VOCAL TRANSFORMATIONS ............................................................98 CHAPTER FIVE KRISTIN LINKLATER: TRAINING A NATURAL VOICE.............................................................................................126 CHAPTER SIX A CRITICAL PERFORMANCE PEDAGOGY FOR VOICE INSTRUCTION.....................................................................................................155 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................175 VITA............................................................................................................................................184 v ABSTRACT Until the late twentieth century, courses in voice and diction were a staple of the field of communication studies. Increasingly these classes are disappearing from departments around the country, largely over concerns regarding the prescription of strict speech standards. At the same time, an interest in vocal training has increased in BFA and MFA actor training programs. This study looks to the shared history of voice training between the fields of communication studies and theatre instruction to provide a critical pedagogy for vocal performance, specifically for the area of performance studies, but also for use in other disciplines. Informed by feminist and queer theory, this dissertation examines the history of vocal instruction in the U. S. from the publication of Dr. James Rush’s Philosophy of the Human Voice in 1823 to the present. The study examines the major works of the elocution and expression movements in the U.S., recovers the voice instruction of twentieth-century theatre practitioners Konstantin Stanislavski and Jerzy Grotowski, and explores training in the “natural voice” as described by Kristin Linklater. Grounded in such a lineage of vocal pedagogy, the study provides an outline for voice instruction that honors the unique vocal qualities of the student performer while providing the student with tools for being heard, understood, and for maintaining healthy vocal usage over multiple rehearsals and performances. vi CHAPTER ONE BETRAYED BY OUR TONGUES LECTER You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed? Pure West Virginia. What's your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? …You could only dream of getting out...getting anywhere...getting all the way to the FBI. STARLING You see a lot, Doctor. -The Silence of the Lambs In Me Talk Pretty One Day, a collection of short biographical stories, David Sedaris recounts his fifth grade experiences in speech therapy. After being singled out for therapy because of his lisp, the young Sedaris undergoes a semester of sessions with an inexperienced speech therapist. Upon attending one such session, Sedaris notices that all the other students in therapy are unpopular, effeminate males. Sedaris wonders whether the attempt to change the boys’s sibilant [s] (a commonly cited vocal marker for gay males) is also an attempt to intervene in their future as homosexuals: “We knocked ourselves out trying to fit in but were ultimately betrayed by our tongues” (Sedaris 10). Like Sedaris, I also was assigned to speech therapy for a lisp, but in my first, not my fifth, year of public school. I enjoyed working with my therapist, though, and became fascinated with the electronic equipment involved in the therapy: a tape recorder, headphones, and a machine like a credit card reader that emitted the sound printed on a magnetic card when you slid the card through the machine. Besides my lisp, I also was treated for a confusion of the fricatives [f] and [t], leading to some embarrassment for my mother when I exclaimed, “Mommy, look at the fruck!” to which my mom answered very loudly so everyone could hear, “Yes, Derek, I see the TRUCK.” I remember giggles when, on my third birthday, I shouted, “I’m finally free!” 1 I credit my speech therapy with what others called my “lack of an accent” later in life. I grew up in rural Kentucky, where everyone had a thick drawl that I always felt lacked the dignity of the Southern dialects I heard in TV and film. In my area of Kentucky, one might “warsh” their car, change the “arll,” and put new “tars” on it. Given my “lack of an accent,” the high school football Coach who taught World Civilization asked several times if I was from “up North.” Even lacking the sibilant [s], I was certain that my precision of speech also read as effeminate, and I was right. Once, Coach called me out for it in front of everyone. I recall him walking down the aisle during class and, as he passed by