Overview

In the sports world, the coach is a person of high status but with voice and speech coaches, this is not always the case. Janet Madelle Feindel has honed her career by developing a program of teaching and coaching than brings the work of the voice trainer to the presidium. Over the last thirty years, there have been great strides in voice training in a number of areas but sadly, directors have often been unaware of these strides. The author shows that the study of the voice and speech as well as the Alexander technique for the director should be an integral part of the director's training. Feindel provides an overview of basic voice and speech production, the Alexander and ways to integrate these principles into the rehearsal process and methods for working most effectively with voice and speech/Alexander coaches.In Thought Propels the Sound, Feindel outlines her successful approach to training actors and musical theatre performers using traditional methods developed by well renowned individuals such as Berry, Linklater, Fitzmaurice and Alexander, and synthesizes them with her own methods of Vox Explora and Resonex that have evolved out of her vast experience training actors at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and coaching for the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival under the direction of Martha Henry, (Officer of the Order of Canada) and coaching professionally working with many noted performers. Thought Propels the Sound is a must book for directors and directing students but also for voice and dialect coaches, Alexander teachers, medical specialists, speech pathologists, actors and singers and anyone interested in the performers voice in the theatre.

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9781597562065

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Reviews

[Feindel's] book synthesizing pertinent knowledge and reducing it to the information most practical for voice and speech trainers is excellent, and overdue. It should be of great value in helping directors, voice trainers enhance the health and endurance of their actors' voices while enhancing their ability to express artistic emotion... The information in this book provides an invaluable introduction to the state of the art, and it should be read by anyone involved in voice training. --Robert T. Sataloff, MD, DMA This book is both practical and insightful. It is practical in that it deals with all the technical aspects of voice and text work that the actor needs to discover and to use when rehearsing a play. It is insightful in that it so clearly identifies the way by which the director can help the actor free her imagination in order to illuminate the text as fully as possible. What to me is deeply important is that, our of her wide experience in the theatre, Janet Feindel puts the voice coach in there as a central part of the rehearsal process. ---Cicely Berry, OBE, Director of Voice, Royal Shakespeare Company Contemporary theatre, reflecting as it does a fast-moving, impatient world, all too often ignores the power of live speech, of the words spoken with deliberation and conviction. Janet Feindel's book is an invaluable aid to the work of the theatre director in this crucial area. Combining personal insight with a solid technical basis, Ms. Feindel brings to bear decades of practical experience gained while teaching and coaching at the highest levels of our profession. --Dr. Vladimir Mirodan, Principal, Drama Centre, London, UK [Feindel's book] will fill a vacuum in the field of performance literature. Although there are many books available to actors on how to train their voices, and actors know that they must train their voices, there is an astonishing level of - let's call it - deafness in directors, artistic directors and producers. This book promises to sound a necessary alarm that will penetrate to those who wield authority over actors and very often jeopardize a performance because their eyes dominate their creative process. In simple terms the information Feindel offers will sensitize directors, empower actors, and guide vocal coaches, trainers and speech pathologists. The book is practical and opens up a subject that has too long remained somewhat mysterious to the non-initiate. --Kristin Linklater, Professor of Voice, Columbia University Finally - a book from Janet Feindel. This is a voice teacher in demand for a good reason: her students are consistently at the forefront of the acting profession. One of a handful of supreme vocal coaches in the English-speaking world, Janet is unique in that she is a Designated Linklater voice teacher, also certified Fitzmaurice and Alexander teacher. Her ability to incorporate this physical work with the voice training has put her into a category all her own. We will absorb her insights about thought-linked voice with eager pleasure. --Martha Henry, Order of Canada, actress, director and Director of the Birmingham Conservatory, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Canada Feindel gives good homework. First is a sidebar with film examples of good, controversial, and bad voice-use by prominent actors for us to hear. ... Feindel both clarifies and bridges the distinction between speech and voice training, and she argues persuasively for the addition of nine months of vocal training to the schooling of directors, whose current training is primarily visual. --Pat Angelin, American Theatre Magazine, (2010) This is a book that is long overdue. A must-have for every director and new voice teacher ... She offers invaluable advice to singers as well. ... This is a remarkable, highly valuable work and I heartily recommend it! --Joan Melton, British Voice Association, Communicating Voice, (2010) The importance of voice work is most explored, but as a trained Alexander teacher Janet not only adds a chapter on the [Alexander] Technique, but peppers her writing with references to the Work. How refreshing this is ... Janet clearly is passionate about her work and has so much experience it's a joy as she shares with us exercises and experiences. --Penny O'Connor, Statnews, (2010)

Author Information

Janet Feindel, MFA, DLT Janet Madelle Feindel is a tenured faculty member in Voice and Alexander technique at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama and also serves as Visiting Professor at UCLA's School of Theatre, Film, and Television.

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