Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

ISSN: 1944-3927 (Print) 1944-3919 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtdp20

Answer the Question

Transplanting, adapting and developing voice pedagogy in Chile

Luis Aros

To cite this article: Luis Aros (2019) Answer the Question, Theatre, Dance and Performance
Training, 10:3, 307-308, DOI: 10.1080/19443927.2019.1667181

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2019.1667181

Published online: 12 Dec 2019.

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Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2019
Vol. 10, No. 3, 307–308, https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2019.1667181
Answer the Question
Transplanting, adapting and developing voice pedagogy in Chile
Luis Aros
In Chile, vocal practices for the theatre were
shaped during the second half of the twentieth
century out of a hybrid of influences and con-
cepts. This makes it difficult to designate any
linear re-purposing of specific vocal training
when, in fact, its history has been determined
by a continual process of adaptation.
Nevertheless, for the purposes of this ATQ, I
have selected two periods for my response.
The first spans from 1941 to the end of the
1990s and the second corresponds to the
early years of this century.
To begin with, the Teatro Experimental of
the Universidad de Chile was founded in 1941
and the Escuela de Arte Dram
atico, of the
Universidad Cat
olica, in 1945. These were the
first professional drama schools in the coun-
try. They mark a turning point in the history
of professional Chilean theatre as they intro-
duce the establishment of a training method-
ology for actors, which, in turn, led to the
analysis of the mise en scene and the conscious
need to develop training methods for the the-
atre. During this period, Chilean voice training
operated under the logocentric paradigm—
which, in the Aristotelean sense, understands
voice as bearing ideas that are subservient to
political discourse, or a dramatic text in this
case—and revolved around the elocution of
words, with the purpose of fulfilling the direc-
tor's predetermined aesthetic. Vocal training,
in this context, was constrained to a functional
and utilitarian purpose and did not offer vocal
alternatives for actors, precisely because
words were thought and practised as
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
possessing a preconceived phonetic and
resonant materiality.
The second period corresponds to the last
twenty years, which, fueled by global exchange
between voice coaches and the development
of critical thought in voice and theatre studies,
brought about a re-thinking of disciplines from
a complex, multidisciplinary perspective.
An event that illustrates this process was the
Primer Encuentro Internacional de la Voz (First
International Voice Conference) in Santiago,
Chile in 2004, which marked a shift in the
Chilean voice curricula. For the first time,
since the founding of the teatros universitarios
(university theatres) in 1941, the local vocal
scene came into contact with voice professio-
nals from around the world, placing tension
on preconceived notions of what voice peda-
gogy can and should be. The meeting also
sparked several collaborations and strategic
alliances between local and foreign professio-
nals, further promoting a process of hybridisa-
tion of techniques and styles within the
Chilean scene.
Hybridisation, in this case, refers to the
crossover of foreign techniques and methods
to supply local needs thus generating new
knowledge and ways of teaching. For example,
after 2004, an exchange between the Roy
Hart Center (Pantheatret), France, and the
Theatre Department of the University of
Chile began. This changed vocal training in the
classroom, by placing the focus of learning
on the pre-linguistic materiality of the voice
beyond the elocution work related to
308 Answer the Question
dramatic text. This process has put voice
teaching and training into question, pulling it
away from elocution and pushing it towards a
theory and practice stemming from the body,
using the body as the source and the limit of
the work (Aros 2014).
Consequently, there has been a radical
transformation in what is understood as vocal
training for actors. Two major outcomes can
be observed:
1. The emergence of a new generation
of local practitioners, who have been
influenced by the changes described above;
2. A reformulation of the voice curriculum in
the principal theatre schools of Santiago,
Chile. This vision is exemplified in the
Theatre program of the Universidad Mayor
(2019), founded in Santiago in 2002, now
an active participant and witness to
these changes.
In briefly answering the above question, I
have attempted to draw the evolutionary path
and re-signification of vocal training in Chilean
theatre. It has grown out of a constant trans-
action between individual (local) and collective
(global) projects, in a process of persistent
transformation. The movement and recycling
of vocal training in Chilean theatre is pro-
foundly rhizomatic precisely because it ‘is
reducible to neither One nor the multiple
[ … ]. It has neither beginning nor end, but
always a middle from which it grows and
which it overspills’ (Deleuze and Guattari
1998, p. 9).
The challenge today befalls on re-signifying
teaching practices and models while grappling
with the question of what it means to teach
voice work to actors. What should a voice
teacher teach? And what is the relationship
between vocal pedagogy and stage work?
References
Aros, L., 2014. Filling the Gap: Toward a Transference of
Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg Text Work
Approaches, to the Voice Curriculum of the University
of Chile Actor Training Programme Unpublished MA
dissertation. The Royal Central School of Speech
and Drama, University of London.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1998. Mil Mesetas,
Capitalismo y Esquizofrenia. Valencia, Espa~na: Pre-
Textos.
Universidad Mayor. 2019. Facultad de Arte [online].
Universidad Mayor. Available from: https://www.
umayor.cl/um/santiago-facultad-de-arte/10000
[Accessed 5 June 2019].
Luis Aros is a Researcher at the Centro de Investigación
en Artes y Humanidades CIAH, Senior Lecturer in Voice at
the Drama Department of the Arts Faculty at the
Universidad Mayor, Santiago Chile, Founder and Director
of the N
ucleo de Investigaci
on Vocal. (www.niv.cl).