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On April 2, Kristin Linklater, a world-renowned teacher of voice and text, was honored by the New York Theatre community, Columbia students, alumni and faculty, and by 70 of the teachers she has trained during a celebration at Miller Theatre. A reception followed in the Low Library Rotunda.
The event honored Linklater's life and work in time for her upcoming 70 th birthday and the revised release of her book, Freeing the Natural Voice . The afternoon tribute to the beloved School of the Arts (SoA) professor was filled with songs, performances of text and music, humorous stories and a dance piece. The documentary film A Tribute to Kristin Linklater also was shown.
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Kristin Linklater at work training students at Columbia's School of the Arts. Here she is assisting David Skeist, SoA '06. |
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Actors, teachers and friends came from around the country and Europe, including England, Germany, Italy and Scotland. Some notable actors attending were Gerry Bauman, Patricia Elliott, Penny Fuller and Rocco Sisto.
It's pretty intimidating, when you Google the words "Kristin Linklater Voice" you get over 43,000 hits," says Steven Chaikelson, chair of SoA's Theatre Division. "A quick scan of those results and you begin to get the idea. Sure, there are links to her books and articles and courses. But, what is so significant, I think, is that a vast majority of the links are to former students, from all around the world, who have been trained by Kristin and who continue to use and teach her techniques."
Students aren't the only ones who learn from Linklater. Through her Linklater Center for Voice and Language, she has trained teachers around the world. Her protégés teach in a majority of the actor-training programs in the United States. Those who are designated as Linklater teachers have undergone between three and five years of training, observing classes and an intensive program conducted by Linklater in the theory and practice of teaching.
Linklater grew up in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She was the Master Teacher of Voice at New York University (now the Tisch School of the Arts) from 1965 to 1977, while also working with the Open Theater; the Negro Ensemble Company, Stratford, Ontario; the Guthrie Theatre, and several Broadway shows. She was a co-founder of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1977.
She has received major grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She also is a 1981 Guggenheim Fellow and a lecturer, writer and actor, playing the title role in King Lear, produced by The Company of Women, her all-women Shakespeare company co-directed with Carol Gilligan. She has been awarded the ATHE and NETC Career Achievement Awards and, in 2001, was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. Linklater is the author of Freeing the Natural Voice (1976) and Freeing Shakespeare's Voice (1992). She joined the theater division of Columbia University's School of the Arts in 1997 and has taught voice and text as well as Shakespeare. |
