Search results for ""author cicely berry""

Cicely Berry, Voice Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, is world-famous for her voice teaching. The Actor and the Text is her classic book, distilled from years of working with actors of the highest calibre.

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Cicely Berry nos relata y trasmite las investigaciones que ha realizado en torno a la voz durante los últimos 50 años con actores, directores y dramaturgos. Una generosa labor que ofrece al lector la ocasión de sentirse partícipe de una experiencia única. Pocos libros trazan una reflexión tan compleja como asequible sobre las relaciones entre el lenguaje, el pensamiento y el mundo. Sobre la influencia de la lengua en la percepción y el pensamiento. Si algo caracteriza los libros de esta autora no es tanto su carga teórica sino su praxis, los ejercicios que comparte minuciosamente con lectores y alumnos. Quien nos interpela en este libro es la voz obstinadamente joven de una mujer de 80 años que nos habla del juego y de la vida, empecinada además en romper con las convenciones del idioma y batallar así contra los tópicos que abundan en el mundo del teatro. Para Cicely Berry un nimio detalle, un gesto, una sola palabra puede revelar la verdad de un personaje hasta el punto de ofrecer la

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Breath in Action looks at the significance of breath to human life - not just the simple fact that if we stop breathing, we die, but also the more subtle ways in which our breath interacts with our voice and our being. Written by experts in vocal and holistic practice, the book is divided into four sections: Breath and the Body; Breath and the Mind; Breath and Holistic Practice; Breath and Performance. It offers the latest theories from a variety of disciplines on how we can be taught to breathe better so as to communicate better, act or sing better, feel better, live better. Combining theory with practice, many of the chapters also offer clearly laid out breathing exercises and techniques.Interdisciplinary in its focus, Breath in Action adds to specialist knowledge in the performance field, whilst also offering enlightening information for those interested in therapeutic and healing processes, movement, and voice and speech sciences.

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"Speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life." Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instincts have been crippled from birth by many processes--by the conditioning, in fact, of a warped society. So an actor needs precise exercise and clear understanding to liberate his hidden possibilities and to learn the hard task of being true to the 'instinct of the moment'. As her book points out with remarkable persuasiveness 'technique' as such is a myth, for there is no such thing as a correct voice. There is no right way--there are only a million wrong ways, which are wrong because they deny what would otherwise be affirmed. Wrong uses of the voice are those that constipate feeling, constrict activity, blunt expression, level out idiosyncrasy, generalize experience, coarsen intimacy. These blockages are multiple and are the results of acquired habits that have become part of the automatic vocal equipment; unnoticed and unknown, they stand between the actor's voice as it is and as it could be and they will not vanish by themselves. So the work is not how to do but how to permit: how, in fact, to set the voice free. And since life in the voice springs from emotion, drab and uninspiring technical exercises can never be sufficient. Cicely Berry never departs from the fundamental recognition that speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life. After a voice session with her I have known actors speak not of the voice but of a growth in human relationships. This is a high tribute to work that is the opposite of specialization. Cicely Berry sees the voice teacher as involved in all of a theatre's work. She would never try to separate the sound of words from their living context. For her the two are inseparable.—from Peter Brook's foreword to Voice and the Actor

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