The Linklater’s Method is a voice training method that attempts to free the natural voice of actors and even non-actors. It is an invention by theater artist and vocal coach Kristin Linklater, who is a professor in the Theater Department of Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York City. In this method, Linklater has trained more than 100 teachers who now teach in a majority of actor-training programs in the United States, England, Germany, Australia, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Russia and Finland. The Linklater’s voice method is based on the theory that the voice is a human instrument and a tool that facilitates the people’s daily existence. She says that when the voice works well, a personal existence is healthy otherwise, when the voice is blocked, held back or suppressed, life is also blocked. Thus comes her method of “freeing the natural voice” and her book of the same line.
The teaching of the method is fascinating to most students. It allows one to breathe down into his belly and to the bottom of the lungs. The first part of the method is designed to re-teach natural breathing and doing away with voice-inhibiting habitual tension, while the second part concentrates on the development of resonators and breathing capacity. Articulation is taught in the last part and the development of expression throughout the process. The method has also become the basis for a 3-year Professional Actor Training Program that aims to develop a speaking voice that can make human expressions through a language or sound. The first year of the program includes a progression of vocal exercises to allow awareness of alignment, breath and vibration, and release of tension from the jaw, tongue and voice work applied to text to link the voice of language. In the second year of the program, students are trained to learn dialects and how to use them as a tool to find a character in a play. The third year allows students to practice the voice work and a great time to solve ongoing challenges encountered in the program.
The goals of the Linklater’s voice method include (a) freeing the natural voice, (b) progression of exercises designed to free, develop and strengthen one’s voice, (c) acquisition of tools to increase physical awareness, deepen relaxation and breath awareness, increase awareness of vibrations, open and free the channel or way for sound, explore resonance and articulation, connect emotions and your impulses to the sound as well as increase vocal range, and (d) application of techniques to your spoken word. The most important goal of the method is to make the teacher lead the exercises with a free, full and connected voice that guides students to also free their own voices.
Students who are well-trained in the Linklater’s Method have voices that can fill a room through resonance, have more vocal variety that can captivate attention and stimulate response from the listeners or audience, and possess a higher capability of being present at a given moment.
