"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
