“Professional” Voice vs. Natural Voice
Recently, I spoke with Seth Barrish, an actor, director, teacher, and Co-Artistic Director of the Barrow Group. Seth’s teaching has influenced more than just my acting: his work has profoundly influenced my work as a communication coach and, perhaps most importantly, as a communicator. Seth uses techniques that seem to tease out truly human behavior in all its quirky glory. In my work with leaders, speakers, and communicators, I value the beauty of human imperfection and rely on the skills and techniques I learned in Seth’s class.
Seth used the Conversation Exercise to help actors notice the difference between “simply doing” the actions in the text and “putting something on.” The actors were asked to have a real conversation, not as the characters, but as themselves talking about anything at all. He would then ask them to “slip in” to the scripted text of the play. He’d ask the actors if they noticed any change, “vocally, physically, or whatever,” in the transition. If so, he’d ask them to “let go of anything that changed so there is no difference between really talking and scripted talking.”
This exercise made me aware of the ways we tend to don artifice when we assume different roles. In class I noticed that many of us drastically altered our natural vocal quality when we moved from speaking extemporaneously to reciting a text—our natural cadence, timbre, volume, and vocal range would shift into “performance voice.”
The is true of the roles we play in life. We can hear it when people move from simply talking to putting on a “professional voice,” the voice of an “attorney,” “customer service rep,” “teacher,” “CEO.” In the same way that actors might have a stereotypical idea of what a character’s voice sounds like and strive to emulate it, many of us have an idea of what a “professional voice” sounds like.
Sometimes we push our voices low—especially women who’ve been told that lowering the voice makes us more commanding as in The Dropout, where Amanda Seyfried depicts Elizabeth Holmes’ extreme vocal choice. Sometimes we push our voices higher into a “head voice,” which can sound more childlike. Sometimes, in an effort to sound more “professional,” we become overly monotone, thinking this gives our words a serious weight. Pushing the voice out of our natural range or inhibiting our natural melodic expression restricts our range and dampens our communication.
I encourage all of us to dwell our natural voices so we have access to variety, to expressiveness, and to our emotions—all things that make our communication more authentic, engaging, and compelling.
This week, we play with our natural voices:
Notice where we feel our voice reside in the body—in the chest, throat, solar plexus? Put our hands on different parts of the body to feel the vibration.
Notice any tension—are we holding or forcing anything physically? Does anything hurt?
Notice when our voice flows, feels free and full of color.
Notice when we fall into an idea of how we “should” sound, an idea of a role.
When we find ourselves speaking in a way that does not feel natural, that is restricted or pushed, “slip in” to our natural voice.
And if we feel like we’ve forgotten what that naturally expressive voice feels like, call an old friend, talk to a child, do something very silly to recalibrate and reconnect with our natural voice.
Next week I will make a very silly video illustrating all of the above.
PS In my series on Freeing the Voice from Habit, we discussed savoring words, how to avoid filler words, habits such as vocal fry and up-speak, and how to access our naturally rich sound.