Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Inc.

Fall 1999 Volume 13, Number 3

ROUNDTABLE: VOCAL COACH--DIRECTOR RELATIONSHIPS

Edited by Barry Kur
Penn State University

On February 17, 1999, a roundtable session was held at the Society of Stage Directors and choreographers Foundation in New York City. Co-sponsored by VASTA and SSD&C Foundation and coordinated by Barry Kur, VASTA Past President and David Diamond, Director of SSD&C Foundation. This discussion addressed issues concerning the relationship between vocal coaches and directors. Barry Kur and David Diamond served as moderators and the participants were all professionals from New York and Regional Theatres. The vocal coaches were Dennis Pattela, Arden Simpson, Walton Wilson and Ralph Zito. The directors were David Esbjornson and Daniel Fish.

Below are excerpts from a typed transcript of this roundtable discussion. The typed transcript indicated that the recorded identity of some of the speakers was difficult to determine. Therefore, VC (vocal coach) or DIR (director) will sometimes be used instead of the speaker’s name. Editing was done to improve clarity.

DIAMOND: Why don’t we start at the beginning, how these relationships get formed and how you actually know when you need to bring somebody in to help with vocal coaching. That’s for the directors . . .

FISH: Well I direct a lot of Shakespeare and a lot of Moliere so I always want one, pretty much, it depends upon the theater. It’s sometimes a luxury that the theater can’t afford but it’s very important to me and the vocal coach is a real important part of the creative team for me, it’s not just someone to come in and say, “hit the final consonants or be louder.” It’s really someone who is involved from before rehearsal through rehearsal.

DIAMOND: Including casting?

FISH: Yes, ideally. I’ve worked with Ralph for seven or eight years now and a relationship has developed, and so in that sense I think it’s a lot like any collaborator you work with, whether it’s a designer or an actor, it very much depends on the personalities involved and it’s one in which trust really grows.

ESBJORNSON: Well, having run a small theater I suppose to some extent I have to agree with Daniel, but it often times is a luxury, although it shouldn’t be. I usually want to bring in a vocal coach when I feel there’s an area of expertise that I can’t get or that I might need some help on. And I agree with Daniel in the sense that I think it’s always collaborative, and that you’re really working on the same set of goals. And I’ve never had the luxury of having a vocal coach in auditions, but that’s a terrific idea. I do not have a tremendous amount of Shakespeare on my resume

KUR: (to vocal coaches) . . . So do you see yourself as someone who is part of the company and the staff, or are you jobbed in as the opportunities arise, and how do you start?

ZITO: Well, I’ve worked under an entire array of conditions. Daniel and I met when we were both on staff at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, and for a number of years I was on staff at both the Shakespeare Theater and at Arena Stage, so I was under contract with the theater to do all of the vocal work that was necessary for any of the productions that came up and, you know although I didn’t have any say in what the season was, sometimes there as a season full of work for me from dialect work to text coaching to whatever. So I was kind of a given member of the team because I had been contracted by the theater, which has its ups and downs as well, because often a director would have been contracted for a production not knowing that I was on staff and sometimes not knowing quite what to do with me or what I was there for. But I’ve also done a lot of freelance work. I have been brought in early by a number of regional theaters just on a job by job basis, and then sometimes I’ll get calls for productions that are already in rehearsal and people have realized that there’s a need for some help so people will call. So there can be any number . . . it’s such a broad-ranging thing there can be any number of possible arrangements . . .

WILSON: Well it depends, I mean I have some rather long standing relationships with companies and directors, and so at this point we share a vocabulary or I’m familiar enough with their way of working or their process or aesthetic, but as Ralph was saying there have been times when . . . I even had a call where a director wanted . . . there was a particular dialect that the whole cast had learned and the week before tech she had decided to change the entire dialect for the whole company of the show. And that’s not something I was particularly equipped to do. I don’t think this particular director had worked with a vocal coach before or with a dialect coach. I’ll frequently get calls about being a “band-aid” of some kind. Like, this actor is losing their voice and they need help, and that’s something I feel slightly more equipped to do.

KUR: What do you do in that case?

WILSON: Well, I’d have to go and do some diagnostic things. See why it is that they’re losing their voice, what it is that they may be doing or it may be an illness. It may be that they need complete vocal rest at the time.

KUR: Did you take the job to change the dialect of the entire cast?

WILSON: No, I did not. I referred them on to someone else who I think did.

ARDEN SAMPSON: . . . it’s run the gamut of having a lot of lead-time and having no lead-time . . . a lot of my dialect work is for auditions, and people call me and they have the audition tomorrow, and I just think that doesn’t let anybody do their best work. That doesn’t happen in theater so often, it’s usually film and commercial. But sometimes it’s theater if it’s coming through an agent, that’s often what I get. I call them my dialect emergencies. I leave time for emergencies because that happens most and there’s a lot at stake.

There was a consensus that short term, “band-aid” calls were common, but then the participants addressed the ideal situations, collaborations, sensitivity, and protection of the actors’ creative process and trust.

ESBJORNSON: Well, obviously what you want with anything, whether it’s working with a dramaturg or the choreographer or movement specialist is a kind of integration and obviously the sooner you can start that process, the more likely you are to succeed in blending all the ideas together. If you can get
tutorials before you start rehearsal for your lead actors, that often times is very helpful.

KUR: What’s the first meeting like if you’re going in cold with a voice coach.

FISH: For me it’s probably talking about the play and what the production is about and what are the problems that the text presents. You know the same way that you would really in many ways the way you would talk to a designer about the visual element of the play or the movement of the play, the sound of the play and how that’s going to contribute to the overall concept. And I think just to reiterate something that is starting to be said is, you know we’re talking about voice here and so it’s such a delicate, sensitive, intimate thing. It’s a person’s voice. I can’t think of anything more personal than that. So the territory is that . . . you know it can be really wonderful and it can also be quite explosive in some way.

DENNIS CARLO PATELLA: I think that’s a really important issue. I think we all have this concern, the sensitivity that we have to that person, that point of focus. The bulk of our work, in terms of the actor, and we come from varied backgrounds and varied language and jargon and training and degrees of training and ways of training and also just trust. Issues of trust. So I think that’s an important part of our discussion, how do we establish our trust and then able to help and assist the actor in their creative process. I mean it is their creative process as well that we are assisting.

DIAMOND: How do you select the vocal coach? The person that’s going to be the right person?

FISH: . . . Because of the nature of the relationship it’s really beneficial to select someone you trust, you have an ongoing relationship with. If you don’t have that, you look to build it and you look to what you need, whether it’s dialect, what kind of dialect it is. So if it’s an English dialect you want to look for someone who is more experienced in that respect . . .

DIAMOND: Where do you go about looking? For people who haven’t used vocal coaches before and they’re using a vocal coach for the first time?

FISH: You can call a vocal coach, you can call Ralph, you can say well this is what I’m looking for, can you do this, if not, who can you recommend? I would imagine you could call any of the people in this room.

ESBJORNSON: That’s happened to me too. I’ve called Liz Smith who I’ve worked with before and she’ll say, well that’s not really my area. Try so and so.

SAMPSON: VASTA has put out a directory that also indicates specialized areas.

KUR: Yes, with the Internet, now we have a website with a professional directory and geographic locations

Q: What’s the website?

KUR: vasta.org

DIAMOND: I’ll establish a link from the foundation page.

Q: Is there an office where you can talk to a person and ask questions?

KUR: No. It’s a volunteer organization, it’s not a licensing organization or representation or union or anything of that nature, and it is geographically spread. But what is important to note and what has already been expressed, is that the (voice professional) community is very much open and honest about what they can and can’t do and will lead you to someone who can help. We have our own list service on which we are constantly saying I can’t take this job in Pittsburgh, is there someone in the area who knows somebody who can do that? . . . And a lot of us are associated with training programs as well so if you go to those institutions there might be people that job out from there or recommend others that are freelancing . . .

FISH: Or call another director.

Addressing the issues of collaboration . . .

ZITO: This director has been hired. We’re working together. We’ve essentially had no choice, but we both have a job to do, so it’s on one hand a less than ideal circumstance. We come from completely different mind-sets. How do we figure out how to work together? I mean I think that’s part of the skill of any theatrical professional because we’re always constantly thrown into collaborations that are sometimes willing and sometimes not entirely willing and so part of our skill is to make our best assessment as quickly as possible, to say okay, how do I figure out what questions to ask. What are you looking for? How much are you willing for me to do . . . And some of those lessons are learned the hard way. I mean my first few years out; I had disastrous relationships with directors that I didn’t know, who I assumed would work just like directors that I knew. And I assumed that they would want the same thing from me that those people had wanted and clearly didn’t, and you know I ended up being almost completely ineffective . . . and a couple times was almost entirely shut out of the production although I was technically on the team. Some of that was my own responsibility because I wasn’t mature enough and experienced enough to really figure out oh, wait a minute. This situation requires that I act very differently than I used to.

KUR: What are the questions you ask of the director?

ZITO: I think one starts simply. What are you looking for? Or I’ll ask have you worked with a vocal coach before? If so, who and where and when? That’s often a really good entree. If a director has worked with another coach that I know and I know that they have an ongoing relationship, I’ll have some sense of how that other person works and that can sometimes be a door. Or to ask specific questions about an actor. What is it that they’re doing that you do or don’t like? More of this or less of that? I think as much as one can make the tasks as concrete as possible when the relationship is new, then I think you can clear up some of the ambiguity and allow the relationship to develop . . . I think that maybe some directors don’t want you to deal with text at all. “Don’t deal with text, don’t do that kind of analysis. That’s what I’m doing. Just address their voices”. Finding that out, I think, is real important.

SAMPSON: Also, there are a lot of fine lines. If I’m giving notes about dialect, sometimes a director has asked me to address a directorial problem with developing character, and they’ll want to know can I get to that via the dialect or the voice or via breathing or something. If I see that and a director hasn’t asked me that, I always check with the director first. Once there was a situation where the director really didn’t want such accuracy in dialect, he wanted a “ feeling kind of a thing.” I can’t remember what his word was. So that was a very different kind of listening for me than really being on top of every vowel and making sure that I can understand every word and where you compromise accuracy versus understanding. He didn’t care about being understood verbally as much as some other stuff. . . . What concerns me sometimes is actors calling me and I start asking questions about character and where they’re from and what do they want, this kind of southern or that kind of southern, and they don’t know. I’ll say, “did the director tell you?” . . . There are a lot of fine lines and we overlap and I just want to be sure that I’m not getting into your territory but that I am doing what you need me to do and maybe I can be of service to some of your territory.

VC: Once I was brought into a theatre I had worked at a number of times and I was hired as a vocal coach for a production of Ezra Pound’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra, and the director had never worked with a vocal coach before. And our first meeting was great. He said, I’ve never worked with anybody like you before, what do you do? So I have this conversation, I said well, the best analogy I can give is that I’m sort of like a designer in that I feel I’m a collaborator with a particular area of expertise and I’m here to help you realize the production and these are the variety of things that I can do. These are the ways I’ve worked in the past. This is generally how I like to work. You tell me what you can do with that? And in this production, how I would see that I could be useful is as follows. This is a complicated text, it’s very important that the story be made clear. On the other hand if the actors are just making the story clear and they’re not really dealing with the complexity of this poetry, I could go in and help them deal with the complexity a little bit more fully, but that is going to evolve. And that actually served as my baseline conversation with a new director, and nine times out of ten that conversation goes great and one time out of ten that conversation loses me a job, because I’ve gone in and talked to directors and said, well, you know I sort of think of the relationship as like a designer and the director doesn’t want anything to do with that. They think that somehow I’m overstepping limits or . . . you know I think directors sometimes are concerned about another person in the production who is alone in a room with an actor?

D: Understandably.

VC: Completely, and I have said to directors, I completely understand that but all I can say to you is that you need to trust me as a professional and to understand that I have experience in exactly that area.

FISH: I’ve been in conversations with directors and they’ll be in their third or fourth preview and they’ll say, you know the design really doesn’t work, does it? Well then why didn’t you change it along the way? . . . That it’s got to be a back and forth thing, all the way through the rehearsal process. You do some work with an actor and the actor comes back in and there’s a response period there where I have to say, well that seems like it’s moving in the right direction or that’s taking us off in a way that I’m not comfortable with, and that goes...and you go back and forth until you both feel that the text is being served, the character is being served, the actor is being served and the directorial concept is. I mean you have to keep communicating. It will happen that an actor goes and works with the voice coach and comes back and you go, what did they do in there?

VC: But that happens all the time. That happens with composers or it happens with a costume or goes to a fitting, and you know you need to just make sure you keep talking about it.

ESBJORNSON: Or you can be in a situation with an actor and it can be a very delicate vulnerable moment in the process and that actor can hide behind that text work instead of doing what they’re supposed to do or vice versa, and so you’ve got to be able to flush that out. It takes two of you to do that sometimes because sometimes that psychology is pretty complicated.

VC: I find it particularly useful in addition to what other people have been saying in that first conversation to have the director talk about the space that they’re performing in. The relationship of the space is a really interesting one to hear directors talking about. A lot of times that will give me a closer idea about how they’re hearing the text, and hearing the play in that space. And I would just like to reinforce, again particularly working with someone who I may not have worked with before, how important it is for me early in the process to watch the director work on a scene, so I can pick up their vocabulary. How they talk to actors, or about actors. Also, so when the director and I try to have some feedback at the end of the day, to say this is what I’ve been doing. To try to get closer to a vocabulary that actually meshes or comes together in a way that’s going to be useful.

KUR: I think it’s significant we’re at a table, and it’s often at the table that a lot of common language can be developed. Do you find that?

DIAMOND: But when it’s on its feet is where it can go out the window.

VC: . . . Certainly if I’m working as a text coach or a voice and speech coach on a classical play, I want to be there when the table work is happening so that I can hear the ideas as they’re developing, I can hear the actors, I can get some sense of what their facility with language is, basic voice and speech issues that I might want to be dealing with in the course of the work. Sometimes I’m not at table sessions for scheduling reasons or whatever, but the more communication and the clearer the communication is, the better off we are. One of the first things I say to every actor that I have never worked with before in an individual session is, if I say anything that sounds like it’s contradicting what you’re working on with the director, you must tell me, and then we’ll go from there. You know it may be a real contradiction, or it may be an apparent contradiction based on the way I’m phrasing it, but whatever it is if you feel that it’s a contradiction, you’ve got to tell me that that’s happening, otherwise I can’t do my job.

DIR: I was just going to say that at the table work too, that’s where all the concepts for that particular approach to the play are going to be laid out and to me, one of the most fascinating things about dialect work especially is the relationship of where they are in the world. You know if you’re in the Midwest, sort of the flatness of the sound . . . the Plains states, and if you’re in the south the languid quality of the language that has to do with some extent with the ruralness and all of those things. I think those become really great touchstones for the company as a whole, and then individually one can work out from that world and say well, but this person fights against that, or this person gives into it, or whatever. And so just to lay that basis down and have everybody agree on what the world of the play, is a nice place to start.

ZITO: And as a vocal coach to have the director verbally reaffirm the work to the actors outside, you know to say, oh, it will be helpful for you to work with the vocal coach on this, or oh, I can hear that that’s . . . I can hear that you’ve worked together and that that’s clearer. So that that’s reaffirmed and it has a lot of value for the actor when it comes from the director. That the vocal coach is not just something they have to endure. Or some punishment. I mean it really isn’t, but they really do feel like oh, I’m being sent back to the vocal coach because I got it wrong the last time in rehearsal, or whatever. For a director to be sensitive to that and to help them.

VC: I’m being sent back to school.

DIAMOND: I want to get back to something that Daniel said before, that if the actor comes back and it wasn’t at all what you had hoped for when they went off with the vocal coach, how do you approach that kind of problem with the vocal coach and with the actor? How do you deal with that situation?

FISH: Well it can be very tricky, I think it depends a lot on the actor that’s involved, and the nature of what has transpired. It may be because as David said, the actor is hiding behind voice work or hiding behind the work in the room. It’s very tricky, and I don’t think there’s any rule to how you deal with it other than you need to communicate with the voice coach about it and talk to the actor about it. Sometimes the solution may be that you’ll work on the scene, the three of you together. The next time you do the scene, the voice coach will come in and be in the room when you’re working on the scene. Or you may say, that person shouldn’t have a vocal session for a week. They should just work on what you’re trying to do in rehearsals. Or it may be a problem that’s really easily solvable and you can just say, well this is the way I want it. You should go back and do it.

KUR: Vocal coaches, how does that effect your ego?

SAMPSON: I just appreciate knowing if it’s going the way you want it to go. And the more information I have, if I know that it didn’t go that way, I need to know how it differed and then I can tell whether it’s something I said or if it’s the way the actor is interpreting me, but I want to know. I really want to know.

VC: Because it may also may be that it may have nothing to do with what happens in . . .

DIR: Or the actor may have gotten a phone call or something and for some reason it’s different. But also there’s got to be room for, any time you push somebody in one direction or another, if there is a problem to address, there’s going to be choices that are made that will ultimately not be the choice, but it will be an important step along the way and it may mean that that actor just needs to be in that place for a day or two. It’s not the end of the world just because the scene doesn’t work right off. . . . There’s got to be some ability to risk a few things along the way.

WILSON: I like the word “risk” because I think just a director taking on a vocal coach is a bit of a risk. I mean there you have your own territory mapped out and to add another person to the relationship is a risky thing. But you say it so well, if you’re willing to take that risk and say “okay, we’re going to risk this because we’re going to gain something more”, you know that’s a wonderful atmosphere for me to come into. To say, “okay we are going to risk something but we have something to gain”. Otherwise, boy oh boy it can be so delicate, you’re be making sure that you’re not jumping into that territory and you’re not.

ZITO: I think as a vocal coach you have to be willing to say, okay, I’m going to lay off that actor for a few days. It really is in the best interest of the production, it’s in the best interest of that actor’s vocal use ultimately if I lay off them for a few days until they get this issue sorted out. And that’s definitely a part of the picture, and it’s interesting that we talk about territory, and when it works best is when actually the territory issue disappears from rehearsal and when the relationship is going well, it stops being about territory in the best sense because we’re all in this . . . to mix metaphors, till the cows come home.

VC: But also I would like to say that the other side of that equation is also true. As a vocal coach you have to be willing to let go and sometimes you have to be willing to fight. Sometimes you have to be willing to say, I know you think that but I really don’t think that at this moment . . .

FISH: Also, I just want to be careful that we’re not bashing actors here because I think most of the time actors are asking and demanding that from us as much as we are from them. It really is like a triangle. The best actors, they’re going to
acknowledge when they’re having a problem and seek that from us as well.

The discussion continued dealing with assumptions made of trained actors to do dialects, the director’s responsibility to cast well, the use of a voice coach in auditions to help diagnose an actor’s dialect/speech agility etc. An interesting issue came up dealing with “star turns” . . .

ESBOURNSON: . . . But I think that what happens more and more of course is that you get into these situations where, “I’m sorry, they’re not going to read for you”. It’s a meeting only or an offer, so then you are talking about a caliber of actor who may make your production happen but they will not read for you, so you don’t know whether they have those skills. They just have a big name.

VC: And they usually get to say, “I don’t want to work with the dialect coach.” I mean that’s happened to me. I’ve been involved with productions where that person has been cast under those circumstances and probably because on some level they know they can’t do the work, just won’t.

SAMPSON: But those shows usually do well just based on the actor’s name.

ESBJORNSON: You make a deal, and sometimes it works out well and sometimes it doesn’t.

DIAMOND: Artistically?

ESBJORNSON: Often times it does not. But box office, yeah. Absolutely.

V C: And sometimes there are actors who are good enough that you don’t notice that they’re not doing the accent. I’m being completely honest, you know they have some sense of who that character is on some other level that allows you for that time really not to think about it.

VC: And there are many high profile actors who are also good technicians who know what they’re doing. You know it’s not everybody.

The discussion evolved toward practical issues, contracts, hours, fees, note-giving, warm-ups.

DIAMOND: (to vocal coaches) . . . Could you talk about how you contract yourself out?

ZITO: Well I would just say that because I work in an entire range of venues from major regional theaters to Broadway to showcase productions. I do the same work for a whole variety of fees, and I tend, I mean without being overly specific, I will tend to contract myself in terms of the overall budget of the production and relation to other fees that are more established. As vocal coaches we don’t have a union, so we don’t have the same guidelines that actors have, you know given a contract, expected to be paid a certain amount of money. But I will tend to contract myself in relation to that, either in relation to the actors salaries or the director’s salary and I have a sort of formula of my own that I work in.

VC: I have ex-students that I’ve worked with in the past who will say, I’m doing this audition can you work with me, and I will do it for free. What’s wonderful about the film world . . . Those budgets are there and . . . you make a few phone calls and you realize what you can charge to that venue and certainly try to take advantage of it if you’re in that position.

VC: I have hourly rates . . . sometimes a flat rate for a production with unlimited hours to get the job done.

VC: I’ll tend to do a contract for the production and say this is the fee and this is the range of hours I will provide for the production.

DIAMOND: In the relationship you’re working in, is it customary that the director will say okay, now give notes. How are the notes given?

ZITO: Usually I write the notes up individually for each actor and I grab them whenever I can. It’s more private, so I have them on paper and I talk to them in person. A couple of times, directors have said, “Okay Ralph, do you have notes for the company? But that’s rare, and given the constrained rehearsal periods that most plays are under, that’s not anything I expect.

VC: And depending on the director, those notes might go through the director, you know before they get to the actor.

VC: If you have a long-term relationship they would go directly maybe.

DIAMOND: Giving notes, do you let the vocal coaches . . . once you get into run-throughs and dresses?

FISH: Sometimes it’s nice to have the vocal coaches sitting there with you and as you’re going through scenes that they can respond specifically to particular notes or at least that correspond to that particular moment in the play. I find that a very good time for actors to do a lot of their own homework is when we’re sitting there running light cues and that sort of thing, so I often encourage people to work through scenes on their own, and that’s a really good time to test the house and to begin to understand how their voice will work within . . . if they haven’t had an opportunity yet to be in the theater that they’re going to be playing in. I often suggest that they take turns going to different parts of the house and listening to each other and helping to give a little bit of feedback about what they’re hearing. That’s the only way I could see it being useful.

KUR: This is a question for directors. I’m wondering if as part of your training, I don’t know how formal your training might have been, but how much of it includes collaboration, including the collaboration of the voice coach? It can be programmatic or just what happens in the environment? Is that happening?

SAMPSON: My formal training included collaboration
involving designers but never a vocal coach.

FISH: My training was very heavily vocal, the actors . . . at Irvine or Dudley Knight, it’s a very intensive vocal program, so as a result I learned a lot and then I actually had the opportunity to direct several productions with a vocal coach on my team, so it was a very good experience.

KUR: I have the opportunity at Penn State for directors to have a semester tutorial with me, mostly with text. They’re also in an acting studio where they hear how it’s all been
integrated, and of course their directing projects where they’re invited to call on me when they need to.

DIAMOND: One of the things that wasn’t mentioned that you can do late in the process is a warm-up. Sometimes people want to do it, sometimes it’s optional, sometimes it’s not optional, if you’ve just gone through a long tech week and you want to pull everybody back to the play for a moment.

DIR: Before a run-through, it puts people in the same world.

DIR: That’s pretty important. Carol told me last night that every night at 7:00 the cast of Electra meets back stage for a warm-up. musical and vocal.

PATELLA: Years ago, my teacher Clyde Vincent was
contracted to do just that very thing, the RSC was coming over here and doing things, and they wanted to have somebody lead them in a warm-up.

VC: I think there’s an important issue in there. Some want to, some don’t, and if that could be integrated earlier or sort of a warning, I mean it makes it easier for us to be able to do that thing. Getting over the imposition of it, although I think more and more actors are welcoming it. But it’s not necessarily the case, a star turn of some kind may not feel comfortable in that situation and then you . . .

DIR: I think it’s also important that there is some one to schedule it in such a way that there is time for the group and and then there’s time for people to warm up on their own. How any individual actor gets from the group warm-up to wherever he/she needs, needs to be respected.

FISH: I think what makes it difficult is our system of half-hour. Some people want to honor that and some don’t feel it’s their obligation to. But I also think that when you’re doing classical work or language based work it requires this kind of attention. When you’ve been working hard all the way along through the rehearsal process, it’s very seldom