‘The voice is the actor’s most sensitive instrument, much more sensitive than the body’.
VoiceLAB is a laboratory of the voice. Inspired by the tradition of closed theatre studios, including Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, which focused on exploring the complexity of the actor’s art, VoiceLAB offers in-depth laboratory work zooming in on its most personal, intimate and unique element. The laboratory approach allows participants to delve deep into the essence of their own voices, not stopping at the surface that is usually defined by goals resulting from the need to present material to the public. By conducting in-depth work with the voice, you can gain a better understanding and control of this instrument. The work allows for an unhurried in-depth process of exploring your voice, its anatomy and psychology. It makes it possible to discover its full potential.
‘The voice is the actor’s most sensitive instrument, much more sensitive than the body’.
VoiceLAB is a laboratory of the voice. Inspired by the tradition of closed theatre studios, including Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, which focused on exploring the complexity of the actor’s art, VoiceLAB offers in-depth laboratory work zooming in on its most personal, intimate and unique element. The laboratory approach allows participants to delve deep into the essence of their own voices, not stopping at the surface that is usually defined by goals resulting from the need to present material to the public. By conducting in-depth work with the voice, you can gain a better understanding and control of this instrument. The work allows for an unhurried in-depth process of exploring your voice, its anatomy and psychology. It makes it possible to discover its full potential.
At the centre of VoiceLAB’s practice is work with polyphony, but music is only a pretext for explorations on many different planes. Our principal focus is on the vertical dimension of music ‒ we try to get the most from each harmony. We see each interval as a grammatical unit carrying a number of meanings: certain moods, tensions and resolutions which tell a kind of micro-story and therefore pose a challenge to the performer and call for full commitment to vocal action. Drawing from musical traditions that use unequally tempered scales, we want to delve into each sound by going beyond the occidental approach to music which is based on the piano keyboard.
Working with three-part material, we want to get to a point where each part is sung by one person. We know that this model of work is very challenging.
Working with the breath, harmony and vibration, as well as with associations and imagination, we want to give participants a subjective key to achieve objective goals. Through practice we want to recognise and examine problems and issues that pose challenges to us and to search for solutions exclusively through practice.
However, VoiceLAB is not a closed laboratory. We want to confront focused laboratory work with the format of performative tasks, such as open rehearsals, work demonstrations and micro-concerts, in order to leave our comfort zones, work through whatever lays beyond them, and learn something more about the voice: how it changes when its listened to.
The sessions will focus on:
- Body and breathing preparation: We will focus on how to assume and maintain a body position that works best for breathing and the voice. We will give particular attention to opening the chest and shoulder area and to relaxing the spine, preparing the body for breathing work. Working with conscious relaxation will help us gain a better understanding of the mechanisms that make the body vibrate.
- Harmony as vibration: Sound is a vibration of waves in the air. This physical aspect – sound’s tangibility – is important as it helps fine-tune the sounds that make up a harmony. Unlike the digital devices used by piano tuners, humans may be unable to determine the exact frequency of beats of a consonance, but they are able to remember the states (emotions, associations, tension) that a harmony puts them into, and then to evoke these states. We use the same approach (sound seen as vibration) when working with different resonators in the body.
- Text as vibration: The air vibration produced by a voice has a meaning and a dramatic charge: this is why we sometimes follow the sound of words spoken in a language we don’t understand. We want to explore the energy of the sound of spoken words that has no direct connection to the meaning of these words or their interpretation.
- Polyphony: Three-part material poses a challenge because the breathing structure and the power of voice and its colour must all be subordinated to the musical whole that also includes the other two parts. In our approach we focus on the physical relations between sounds rather than contenting ourselves with singing the three separate parts at the same time.
The workshop will comprise individual training as well as group sessions and open rehearsals. The first session will help us regain the momentum we have lost during the months of confinement.
Individual work and in particular open demonstrations offer a chance to test the skills developed in a closed laboratory. By testing our voices in these conditions, we are able to understand them better.