Kristin Linklater

Kristin Linklater (born 22 April 1936) is a Scottish vocal coach, dialect coach, acting teacher, actor, theatre director, and author. She is currently Head of Acting in the Theatre Arts Division of Columbia University.^[1]

Biography

Brought up in the Orkney Isles, Scotland, Linklater trained under Bertram Joseph and Iris Warren at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). During the 1960s, she relocated to the United States and worked with the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada and the Negro Ensemble.^[1]

She was a founding member of Shakespeare & Company which was for many years in residence on the former estate of novelist, Edith Wharton in Lenox, Massachusetts. Linklater left Shakespeare & Company in the mid 1990s. Linklater developed her own approach to voice for actors, influenced by her teachers at LAMDA as well as the Alexander Technique. Her work is designed to liberate the natural function of the vocal mechanism as opposed to developing a vocal technique. Her writings on voice include Freeing the Natural Voice (1976) (ISBN 0-89676-071-5) and Freeing Shakespeare's Voice (1992) (ISBN 1-55936-031-3). She is of part Swedish descent, through her father the Scottish novelist Eric Linklater.^[2]

Linklater has trained many well-known actors, including Patrick Stewart, Donald Sutherland, Alfre Woodard, Mary Tyler Moore, Bill Murray, Angela Bassett, Courtney Vance, Sigourney Weaver, Sam Rockwell and Bernadette Peters. Linklater was a teacher and head of the Acting program at Emerson College from 1990–1996.^[3]

Her son is actor Hamish Linklater, who currently appears on the CBS sitcom The Crazy Ones. Her father was novelist Eric Linklater, and her mother was social activist, Marjorie Linklater (née MacIntyre).^[4] Her brothers Magnus Linklater and Andro Linklater are writers. She also has a sister, Alison, who is a painter.

More about Shakespeare & Company: The Company originated in 1973, when Linklater and several British-trained American actors from the LAMDA and Webber-Douglas schools, founded the acting troupe of the same name. Kristin was invited to be co-director with Tina Packer. The original company experimented with several of Kristin's voice theories for five months in Great Alne, Warwickshire. Later that year they performed The Taming of the Shrew and A Winter's Tale in Waterford, Connecticut, and off-Broadway at the Performing Garage in SoHo. This predated the formation of the permanent training and performance site in Lenox, Massachusetts. ^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography

• Linklater, Kristin (June 1976). Freeing the Natural Voice. Drama Publishers. ISBN 0-89676-071-5. 
• Linklater, Kristin (November 2006). Revised and Expanded Edition, Freeing the Natural Voice. Drama Publishers, an imprint of Quite Specific Media Group,Ltd. ISBN 978-0-89676-250-3. 
• Linklater, Kristin (April 1992). Freeing Shakespeare's Voice: The Actor's Guide to Talking the Text. Theatre Communications Group. ISBN 1-55936-031-3. 

References

Further reading

• "Kristin Linklater", on the Internet Broadway Database
• "Kristin Linklater: Acting, A Verbal Art", Columbia News Video Brief, 7 February 2000. URL accessed 4 January 2006

External links

• Kristin Linklater.com – official website
• "Erotikes", Columbia Magazine, Fall 2003
• "Balancing Acts: Anne Bogart and Kristin Linklater Debate the Current Trends in American Actor-Training"