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The Kembles and Vocal Technique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Maarten van Dijk
Affiliation:
Assistant. Professor, Drama Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Extract

Stage speech, like the other techniques of acting, such as gesture, movement, and the interpretation of character, has always been subject to the theatrical conventions of an age. The conventions, while superficially based on current fads and fashions are on a more profound level the result of an underlying creative method reflecting commonly held views about the correct or ‘natural’ methods of imitating nature on the stage. Nothing demonstrates the enormous changes in stage speech over the last hundred years more vividly than the few existing recordings made by actors who had most of their training and their careers in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1983

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References

Notes

1. The recordings and artists mentioned are to be found on the Rococo label, Nos. 4002, and 4003.

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