Kristin Linklater

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Kristin Linklater (born April 23, 1936) is a prominent vocal coach, dialect coach, acting teacher, actor, and director. She is currently Head of Acting in the Theatre Arts Division of Columbia University.

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 as well as training young actors. 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).

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.

Her son is actor Hamish Linklater, who currently appears on the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. Her father was novelist Eric Linklater, and her mother was social activist, Marjorie Linklater. Her brothers Magnus Linklater and Andro Linklater are writers.

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 Taming Of The Shrew and Winter's Tale in Waterford, Connecticut and Off-Broadway at the Performance Garage. This predated the formation of the permanent training and performance site in Lenox, Mass.

[edit] 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.