Cicely Berry has always expressed quite clearly her support for allowing diversity in the sounds expressed by actors. As she says in The Actor and the Text (1992:22),
What seems to me important is that we in the theatre retain the power to excite people with language; it should not be owned by the educated and/or those who rule, so we must awaken people’s ears to the pleasure of verbal communication—to its music and to its cultural diversity.
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She has presented workshops in China, India, Russia, Korea and Brazil and also in Europe (Iceland, Croatia and Poland) and comments positively in her observations of these different cultures (Berry 2001:59). What is noteworthy is that Berry seems to adapt her working methods with ease to the language of the group and that it doesn’t have to be conducted in English. The common denominator though, is working on a Shakespearean text in languages such as Hindi, Mandarin, Portuguese and Russian. She knows the text so well that it doesn’t matter if it’s foreign and can hear instinctively where the nuances of thought and feeling lie in the speaker and whether it rings true or not in the sound and rhythm: “I hear where the actor is in the text, and what he/she is trying to do with it” (Berry 2001:21).
In her book Text in Action (2001), she describes a workshop on King Lear that she did in Beijing and how in tune the actors were at one point with the meaning of the dialogue and how this simply stood out for her, even though it was in Mandarin and pitched at a very different level compared to English intonation. Berry found the tonal aspects of the language difficult, at first, as in Mandarin the meaning changes as the tone shifts but, found that after taking time on the four key scenes (selected by the working group and herself), the actors found the “reality of the scene and the formality of the language—the exact rhythm and music” (Berry 2001:52,53).
She found a way to help this group to understand the words and the relationships between the characters that reflected the bigger issues in these scenes. Through specific work on the language itself they found their own emotional, connection to the older Mandarin translation, which to Berry’s ear sounded “right, when someone hits the moment and is behind the word” (Berry 2001:52). I think this is an important insight of Berry; the recognition that actors or performers who speak with meaning, all do so through using the body, the tone and resonance of the voice, the pauses or spaces between words and the clarity of thought is made clear by specific attention to the sounds in words. This “depth and feeling” (Berry 2001:52) she could perceive very clearly from the Chinese actors in the workshop, without having to impose her own cultural view of the play and she poses the question or comment that “this surely is an area of collective understanding, something which transcends cultures” (Berry 2001:52). She states that this work truly made her “learn to listen” (Berry 2001:51).
Although I’ve not come across much criticism of Berry as a teacher, writer and of her views (in fact, quite the contrary), I have read an article by Richard Paul Knowles: Shakespeare, Voice and Ideology—Interrogating the Natural Voice (1996), where he questions her use of Shakespeare as a kind of ‘universal’ text that can be used in many different contexts and with culturally diverse actors. The author seems to come from a philosophical background, rather than a literary or theatrical one. He certainly acknowledges Berry and her books as having a “pivotal influence…in the history of Shakespearean performance in the twentieth
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century” (Knowles 1996:92). His views are not the focus of my study at this point, but it is interesting how his theoretical idea of her methods and influence, seems at variance to how Berry experienced her own aims and work. As a practical voice teacher myself, it seems clear that one’s working methods can easily be misunderstood by those who do not engage with it physically in the working or rehearsal space. Berry has always stressed her political stance as left-wing and how Shakespeare can be interpreted world-wide from various perspectives:
For we surely have to keep asking—why is Shakespeare important to us today—and why is he relevant…he is nearly always dealing with very strong political issues—issues so often part of today’s world. (Carey 2003:232)
In India, Berry discovered in her workshops that actors felt freer to explore the sonnets and scenes in their own dialects, rather than only using the standardised Hindi text translations. She felt she needed to release them from only speaking in the accepted, standard Hindi sound. But all seemed to enjoy and benefit from working on the Shakespearean texts themselves and found themes of interest and connection. In Africa, Berry worked with groups of actors from all over Zimbabwe who spoke in different dialects. However, she found that the smaller theatre companies were able to work in English along with their own languages but that there was a strong desire to work more formally on scripted text. The groups (actors and directors) wanted “their work to be more educational, so that they could open up ideas, help deal with problems, and perhaps be more of a political source” (Berry 2001:54). In these workshops she used more poetry from various world renowned poets such as Neruda and Brecht, along with Shakespeare. She assisted the different cultural groups in combining a story-telling approach with a more formal exploration of a text and its language. This enabled the actors to later approach scripted plays with more knowledge and not only to rely on their own improvised material. Berry’s approach reflects an awareness of diversity and openness to interpretation, by allowing the actors to relate to the texts in their own way, yet finding specific qualities in the speaking of the words (Berry 2001:54,55). This imaginative approach combined with good, practical, vocal discipline is what many of these groups sought in their working process with her. She in turn felt “This visit taught me so much about cultural perspectives…and how we in the West are so influenced and caged in by time and space” (Berry 2001:55).
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