Knowing how to connect language with breath and voice
is a golden key to hang on the chain of the actor's craft.

This website offers information on my work which is sometimes known as “Linklater Voice” and sometimes known as “Freeing the Natural Voice” which is the title of my textbook for actors, the original version of which was published in 1976 and which has sold over 120,000 copies.

November 2006 saw the publication of the revised and expanded Freeing the Natural Voice. I rewrote and revitalized my book with the explorations and discoveries made over the past thirty years of work in the classroom, on the rehearsal floor and in performance. The sub-title of the revised book is Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language and the new approach to the exercises emphasizes the imagery and imagination that was latent in the earlier work but now emerges as an essential key in the contribution of the free voice to the art of acting.
This revised and expanded edition reveals the power of imagery and imagination in developing the art of the voice. It incorporates exercises developed over the past three decades that have stood the test of repetition, reliably producing results when practiced conscientiously and with understanding.

I would like to persuade you that knowing how to connect language with breath and voice is a golden key to hang on the chain of the actor's craft.

My second book, Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice, was published in 1992 by Theatre Communications Group and has been widely recognized as an actor-friendly introduction to speaking Shakespeare.

I want to say a few things about the voice here at the beginning so that you have an idea about my point of view on the subject.

The voice is a human instrument. It is not merely a musical instrument, though it certainly is that too. It is not merely a utilitarian tool that facilitates our daily existence, though it does that too. The voice is composed of three to four octaves of speaking notes that can express the full gamut of human emotion and communicate all the subtleties and nuances of thought. Its great value is in the directness and immediacy of its communication and in how much it reveals about the person who speaks. This is also its danger. The voice learns early in life how to prevaricate, how to defend, how to mask the truth.

I would like this website to be a rich source of information about this particular approach to working on the voice. You who are reading this are either an actor (you know you must work on your voice if you are to be a good actor), or a singer (you are always searching for more knowledge about the art of voice), or a public speaker (you are pretty confident but a few hints would help), or a teacher (you teach huge noisy classes all day and your voice gives out in the end), or you are shy, timid, and people are always asking you to speak up because they can’t hear you, or you are a strong dynamic woman with a little girl’s voice -- or, or…..

The exploration of one’s own voice is the search for the ring of truth, something natural and real that began with vital authenticity in the first breath and the first cry. The search can be a psycho-physical drama, a poem, a song, and talk, talk, talk. Talking about breathing and then breathing, talking about emotion, admitting emotion, feeling the feelings of breath and emotion; sensing the vibrations in the body: vibrations flowing through bones, reverberating in the ribcage, the cheek-bone cavities, the nose-bone corridors, the sinus chambers and the great dome of the skull. The voice voyages from the inner geography of neural pathways, organs, mind, impulse and consciousness carrying the fragile vessel of the psyche, crowded with words made flesh, on sound-waves and ripples of thought, traveling out to find the ear of another consciousness housed in another body. That is, we talk. And we listen. And when this works well it is the stuff of a healthy personal existence. When the voice is blocked, held back, choked, suppressed, life gets blocked too.

If you are an actor you need open free channels of vocal and physical communication and unblocked access to your emotional and intellectual energies.
If you are a speaker in any arena, you need to find the means to access your potential ability to express yourself beyond your defensive limitations -- and this means you must exercise -- your breath, your voice and your Self.
We will give you the information, my helpers and I, but I also want to try to speak to you so that you hear my voice, my subjective voice, introducing you to this particular kind of voice exploration.

We will tell you which theatre programs and university departments have Linklater teachers on their faculty.
If you are an individual interested in working privately or finding out about workshops around the country we will list teachers and how to contact them and keep an updated schedule of workshops.

I myself teach at Columbia University in New York City. I teach Voice and Text and Shakespeare in the Graduate Theatre Division of the School of the Arts. The Theatre Division has five programs: Acting, Directing, Playwriting, Dramaturgy and Management. My colleagues on the acting faculty are Andrei Serban, Nikolaus and Ulla Wolcz, Anne Bogart, Eduardo Machado, Arnold Aronson, Andrea Haring and other distinguished professionals. I teach very few workshops outside Columbia due to lack of time. I teach regularly, however, in Germany and in Italy.

More and more I want to develop ways to develop interactive communication between you, the person who wants to find his or her voice, and me as the possible source of answers to your questions.

Kristin