Hul will hè ek moet stilbly daaroor, maar kyk, kyk
Tog liewe mense, die wèreld het ‘n miskruier goeword!
Hiedie is die stad waar hul kom om te verdwyn –
Dit is hier waar ons nie meer is of word nie.
Luister, die voèls fluit die wreedste feit –
Dit is maklik om die wèreld life te hè, maar selfs ‘n kus laat ‘n merk.
Niks kan ooit wees sonder om ook te word nie.
(Greeff D, 2007; “Dit is kwart voor vier”)
Donovan Greeff wrote the above to me from London. He writes about the place South Africans go to stop being South African, which, really, is anywhere other than South Africa. Donald Howarth wrote Othello: Slegs Blankes. Paul Slabolepszy played in it, in the Seventies, at The Space. The Space was demolished two years ago. This year Paul Slabolepszy showed me his photos of Othello: Slegs Blankes. Then I left for London. In London Vanessa Cooke asked me to the National Theatre to see Ruphin Coudsyer’s photos of Market Theatre productions. I went. And I met Donald Howarth.
And sitting in Donald Howarth’s Hammersmith home, a pawn’s move from the bridge, with a blue and white bit of steel rustily proclaiming George Devine Was Here, whilst a Tibetan Terrier did a thing against the laws of nature against Donald Howarth’s leg, Rosie of the Battersea Arts Centre phoned to offer me an interview. And I said, “No, I’m going back to South Africa.” And Rosie said, “Good luck.”
And walking to the station, still hearing Donald Howarth laughing, and wondering if South Africa was the right thing, if things can be right or wrong, half-full or half-empty, a cab came past, slowly, geared in second, wearing a slogan, “South Africa: alive with possibility”. Pure Goebbels. But I decided to come back anyway, even though the Soho Theatre was to ask me to read for the Writers’ Centre the next day.
And the next day after I arrived in Cape Town a man with a knife offered to take my wallet for me, and I laughed and said, “I’m an unemployed actor,” and kept walking. And some weeks later, walking to take my Toyota taxi home, a flustered German accent announced men with knives. And I sprinted across the Company’s Gardens and the baddies ran away and I kept walking to get home. And walking back from Artscape to pick up my script to learn my lines to find four men with their hands in my pockets I said, “Nee, dis my sleutels,” and I kept everything that was mine and I kept walking. This is the not-so-civil society in which I live. And I’m still here. And I’m going to stay here. And I won’t go. Not again. Because:
Who is going to teach voice when we’re gone?
(Singer J, 2007; Conversation outside the Little Theatre, Cape Town.)
And:
In the years we’ve offered the course we’ve had one graduate in Theatre Voice...
(Mills E, 2007; Interview.)
I want to teach Theatre Voice. I want to teach voice to South African students in South Africa. I want to teach South African students to use their voices in performance, and I want those voices to be South African. This despite:
Not long ago, I encountered a production of Shakespeare in which the actors spoke in native South African accents... It brought out new values in Shakespeare’s text, but it did alienate some in the audience and cause controversy.
(Rodenburg P, 1997; 125.)
My research proposal (I propose to research at the University of Cape Town) is titled “Owning The Voice”. To own the voice is to speak with confidence and with clarity. And to speak with confidence and clarity is to communicate from a clear sense of one’s own ability with ease and self-assurance exactly how - and what - one wants to be understood. The aim of the research is to develop a methodology for the voice training of the young, specifically South African performer recognising South African English accents. The time has come to talk of how we talk of many things, (thanks, Lewis Carroll) and to deconstruct South African society through accent.
Consider the sale pitch of the Voice Clinic – a South African-based company that sells vocal technique:
Accent is everything! Or is it? The way you speak counts! So says a recent study on class mobility among South African youth by Kuper Research for the International Marketing Council (IM) of South Africa. In fact, the survey says, accents count for more than people’s role during the struggle.
(Rissen-Harrisberg M, 25 September 2007. “English as she is spoke”.)
Rissen-Harrisberg’s above jingle is the acid test: with the emergence of any English-proficient black elite a social awareness of accent is on the increase. Consider also:
...our voice has evolved with us, and is therefore a complex mix of background, physical make-up and personality... And because of this we quite involuntarily make a statement with our voice... to do with class, education and cultural background...
(Berry C, 2000. 16.)
A hierarchy of South African English accent is consequently being created – if not shifted – and an active awareness of the hierarchy of that accent is yet to be fully reflected and used in South African theatre to reflect, if not challenge South African society.
In my experience of South African drama schools, having contact with the Stellenbosch University, the University of the Witwatersrand, Pretoria Technikon and most specifically, the University of Cape Town, voice training (where still actively given) does not necessarily focus on a uniformity of accent or pronunciation where that voice training is given in English. But equally, an individual’s own development of a forced “theatrical” voice – often a personalised version of “received pronunciation” (RP), regularly goes unchecked in many instances. Patsy Rodenburg herself, the acclaimed Guidhall-based British voice teacher, both defines RP and acknowledges, “A war still rages in theatre and in actor-training programmes about whether or not to teach ‘received pronunciation’... a standard form of English with, supposedly, a neutral accent.” (Rodenburg P, 1997. 123). Rissen-Harrisberg terms RP a “western accent” and jingles out another warning bell:
We have, however, noticed a growing trend in the number of people who come to use in search of a new accent. We were recently approached by a well-known TV presenter who wanted to develop a western accent. When we asked her why that was, she said it was because the presenters with the western accents got the better jobs.
(Rissen-Harrisberg M, 25 September 2007; “English as she is spoke”.)
By personal definition, that which I term a “theatrical” voice is a manner of speaking invariably drawing on a blustering method of combining resonance with accent (the personalised-type RP/”western accent” mentioned above) to achieve a sense of vocal high status that the performer feels to be beyond criticism: ultimately, the performer subconsciously believes there to be a kind of power in sounding less South African – or more “western”. Essentially this type of vocal bluster – which Rodenburg would term, “bluff” (Rodenburg P, 1997; 31) – results when a performer feels vulnerable – and that vulnerability can stem from the performer’s inherent knowledge that in speaking he or she reveals their “... class, education and cultural background ...” (Berry C, 2000; 16). The blustering is therefore an attempt to conceal that which the voice reveals about the performer – and not necessarily the character to be portrayed by the performer. Rather a kind of vocal insecurity rests solely in the performer. A certain insecurity within, and distrust of, South African English accents onstage/in performance does exist. Uys observes:
Athol Fugard performed at the Labia. He performed in his own South African accent. And everybody thought, “Oh sis,” because nobody did that – nobody wanted to sound South African – you were always going to leave South Africa, you were always going to go and perform in London.
(Uys P, 2003; Presentation At The Little Theatre.)
And on the steps of the Lyttleton, Ann Pennington, Max Stafford-Clark’s wife, noted wryly:
A South African accent really is a terrible accent. It’s a terrible accent. You can’t take to the [London] stage with that accent.
(Pennington A, 2007; A Conversation In London)
The purpose of my research then, is to develop a methodology that supports the individual (South African) accent of the student, regardless of “... class, education and cultural background.” (Berry C, 2000. 16). The goal is to support the formation of a “foundation” voice for the performer – the performer’s own – as individually explored with an awareness of initial range and unique habits pertaining to the South African individual. By establishing a “foundation” voice, the performer is consequently enabled to explore and develop the voice beyond his or her own, having established a reference point in the form of that “foundation” voice. Further, this research ultimately aims to prevent what is potentially a uniformity of accent on South Africa’s stages: a uniformly blustering, “western” accented-type voice that so desperately demands to reflect a higher social if not economic status. The stage is under threat of being exclusively owned by an upper economic bracket of South African society: a western accent – a received pronunciation – that silences all other voices.
In this silencing a parallel with British theatre is slowly emerging in South African theatre at present – a social hierarchy of accent. A social hierarchy of accent is very much in force on British stages, having listened to British theatre so recently myself, and, as Rodenburg admits:
Many theatre audiences come from the barbican of RP speakers and resent what they think of as their plays being done in anything but the correct accent. I have received too many letters of complaint not to know there is this prejudice among audiences.
(Rodenbury P, 1997. 127)
South Africa is similar – but different: we have eleven official languages. Orwell might have noted that English is currently more official than others. We stand a critical point of sublimated vocal censorship in South Africa. The most valuable observation out of my London sojourns (I travelled there after a brief period at the University of Witwatersrand), is that if theatre is about communication, then the communication is in itself of higher importance than the medium: and English is just a medium. It must be noted at this point that the emphasis on South African – specifically English – accents results from practicality: the training is itself to be given in English. This outlook runs somewhat counter to the current, general trend of a globalisational voice training for South African English-speaking performers that is based primarily on British voice coaching, particularly the work of Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg. Whilst both Berry (2000) and Rodenburg (1997) argue in favour of preserving, if not supporting, a performer’s own accent, training in South African drama schools would seem to indicate a gap in this regard: South African accents are not encouraged in themselves, nor is a common musculature of South African English regarding vowels and consonants specifically taken into consideration. The student performer is, essentially, left to their own devices. In conjunction with the above, consider Berry’s (2000) argument: “I want to look at the factors which hold us back from making the text alive and as rich as possible... The reliance we put on our own sound [is one such factor]... We are trapped in our own sound.” (Berry C, 2000. 15). Counter to Berry’s argument, the thrust of this proposed research is that the development of the voice must begin with just that – our “own sound”, and particularly an awareness of the musculature of South African English. This proposal, then, signals a shift in the perception of the work of Berry and Rodenburg: that the works of both be used as resources to developing a uniquely South African voice training that strengthens a South African identity by actively linking the sound of the performer with the sound of the performer’s environment – South African society, and essentially, South African audience, through an especial focus on accent. Location, having informed the voice to the point of audible accent is, in the context of this research, to be taken into account when developing the individual voice of a young performer. And that location is South Africa.
Having stopped over in Johannesburg en route to Cape Town, Thomas Hall, head writer for Penguin Films, astutely noted over a quick coffee:
I don’t have a problem with a South African accent, but there are many kinds of South African accent, and when, in an international movie, the villain has some stereotypically flat accent, it becomes very difficult to believe that Koos from Benoni is intent on taking over the world.
(Hall T, 2007; Conversation In Johannesburg)
By developing the individual performers’ confidence to speak in his or her own accent it becomes impossible for that individual to shift, as a performer must, into different accents – and portray a greater segment of society as applicable. And this is the point: the South African stage must be peopled with South African characters from all sections of society – to avoid precisely the manner of stereotype Hall identifies.
I can’t pretend that teaching voice is going to decrease crime, or create employment, or dredge the political morass in which we are floating and sinking in turns. But giving students their own voices and letting them speak will comment on these things. It will add up. There will be more voices. There will be more voices to speak out and be heard.