Dr. Smiti Nathan

Transcript

Smiti: Welcome to Curiosity Meets the Past, a podcast for curious minds who love learning about the past. My name is Dr. Smiti Nathan, and I’m an archaeologist and your host.

IIn this episode, I’m speaking with Christine Adam, a voice accent and communication coach. I first connected with Christine when I was looking for someone to help me better own my voice across different speaking contexts. What stood out to me was how she approaches voice, not just as a sound we make, but an embodiment of our lived experiences, including our histories.

Christine has spent years training actors in both the US and the UK. She’s worked with performers to convincingly take on the physicality, cadence, and accent of people from different time periods, and she’s gonna share a bit of what goes into that type of preparation.

But her insights go far beyond the stage.

Christine also gives us a glimpse into how our voices are shaped, the evolution of vocal trends and how anyone can own their voice in a way that feels powerful and authentic. Speaking of authenticity, she starts by giving us an overview of what goes into preparing for a historically specific role that would feel true to its time.

Christine Adam: Previous to living in DC, which is where I am now, I spent eight years living in the UK and I worked at a, a drama school there called ArtsEd, where I was their voice and speech and accent coach for their, uh, degrees in acting and their degrees in musical theater. And they always had projects around how to, authentically own essentially, classic American plays and classic American playwrights.

So we were doing works like by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, things like that. We’re looking at early 20th century playwrights,

So the first investigation is how did people in that time hold themselves? because it’s often different than how we hold ourselves now. So it kind of starts with that as of what is the body language, which is not just gonna be different because of time, but also because of geographic context and culture and social attitudes.

And from there we kind of look at, okay, if I’m holding my body in that way, what kind of sound does that produce? Because the voice is an instrument. or I should say the body is an instrument that produces voice, So if you think about, you know, if you play a violin and you’re playing it like this, it’s gonna sound very different than if you’re playing it like this.

Right. And it’s the same thing with your voice. How you’re holding your body has an impact on the quality of the sound that gets produced, right? So, uh, we’d start with body Then we’d look at things like social attitudes class, race. So there’s all sorts of features that kind of go into the sound of a voice, including a speech and language, right? What kind of vocabulary is being used and, and how can that be owned authentically? Um, and the final piece to that is also accent, right? Accents change over time. So how, what was the accent of that particular time period?

And what kind of adjustments do we need to make?

Smiti: Got it. Thank you so much for that. You touched on this already a little bit, but could you go into a bit more detail about how you conceptually think about a voice?

Christine Adam: Voice is, you know, a lot of people think of voice as like, it’s right here, And this is your voice box as, as we call it growing up. And that’s true. Your voice, uh, your, your voice box is here, and your voice box is essentially, a larynx is what it’s called. That’s the thing that holds it.

And there are two tiny flaps in there that are your vocal folds or your vocal chords, and they do produce the initial sound waves of your voice. But your voice is actually created from your whole body. It’s produced through your breath, which is the power source of your voice. In terms of the anatomy of how it works, breath is what creates the power source. And as that breath moves up through your body, it vibrates those folds and. When those folds get vibrated, at that point, the sound is only about as loud as a butterfly’s wings.

What creates the unique sound of your voice is then what happens next, which is that those sound waves move up into the spaces of your throat, your mouth, your nose, and get shaped. In those areas and then get sent out into space. I, I often talk about with students that people don’t just hear your voice.

They can actually feel your voice, so that was, that’s the quick anatomical lesson over how it works. But in terms of conceptually, which is really what you were asking, what I think about in terms of the voice and what is so powerful about it, it is that it is at once, a reflection of your personal history, which is of like where you come from, your people, your country, Also the places that you have lived within that country, and then your peer groups, So, um, how you have evolved over time. It’s all of that in one and it’s also an immediate reflection of how you feel in this very moment. So it is the both and of what it is to be human, if you will.

Smiti: Well, that’s really powerful and very true when we’re reflecting on that, and I’m curious then, when it comes to coaching actors and actresses for historic roles, what kind of research goes into that to come up with the voice that you ultimately coach them on?

Christine Adam: First it kind of starts with, a little bit about where is this person from? What are the social attitudes? What are the cultural attitudes of where this person is from? so there’s the place, there’s also the class within that place that often class has a, has a role in how voices sound and what kind of speech is used.

Looking at like vocabulary for clues of and, and context within the narrative for clues of both place and specific class context. Race and gender play a role as well. So, you’re looking at all of that, and then you’re looking at, body, right? Again, how is the body being held within that?

Modern bodies tend to be more collapsed. I don’t know if you ever like walk through malls and you, you know, you see the stores and you see the mannequins and have you ever noticed they’re like in totally strange body positions.

They’re always kinda like this or something, or like this or, you know, and and when you look at models and how models move these days when they, you know, they’re, they’re often quite collapsed. like, so that’s what I mean by social attitudes of like what is being culturally set as the expectation for how we hold our bodies, it doesn’t take long to figure out why, right? We’re often quite sedentary. We’re often like this, we’re often, you know, uh, and so what you’re doing with your time really shapes how you’re holding yourself.

This is not how people have held themselves through lots of time periods in history. So a big part of what we would then have to look at is kind of how to find something different and be able to maintain it in a way that’s healthy, and that feels owned and authentic. So I would, you know, often work with movement people on that.

Like in with an actor training for example, there’s uh, there’s movement coaches as well as voice coaches. I’ll back up a second. I’ll talk about social attitudes also in the context of speech, Or of vocabulary use. I’m thinking about that in terms of language also that a lot of like, historical plays, if you will, are much longer-winded. It’s much longer sentences, much more flowery language. and there’s a real sense of, I’m gonna put myself out there, I’m gonna put myself on the table, I’m gonna tell you how I feel about this, that, isn’t true in modern plays.

Language tends to be more clipped. l language tends to be in shorter sentences. and this is again, I’m talking broad trends here. Obviously there’s a lot of nuance within this, but, so if you’re working with actors who are growing up in that world, then for them to like, kind of put everything on their sleeves and just like, let me express myself with this beautiful, flowery language that can feel really inauthentic.

And stilted. So we have to work on how they can really, um, own that, in a way that I, I just have to speak this, I just have to say it and I have to say it using these words. In terms of a specific example that I think kind of crystallizes some of the, the stuff. That I’m talking about. I was once coaching a, a voice coaching, a Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams. And it was a group of young British actors who were all in their early twenties. It takes plac e in New Orleans in the 1940s, and there are a lot of themes in this around, class and gender. I would say those are the, those are two of the biggest themes. The central characters are two sisters and one of the sister’s husbands. So it’s, uh, Stella and Stanley are the couple. Stanley comes from a different social class. He comes from a lower social class than how Stella and her sister Blanche were raised but Stella lives with him and they have a very, toxic relationship in the sense that they are in, on the one hand, deeply a love and very sexual with each other.

And on the other hand, he can get physical. and then her sister comes to visit and her sister, as he would put it, has heirs basically and looks down on their life together. And then throughout the play, what they begin to find out is that she has actually lost the family plantation. So she has actually lost all the money and she’s actually coming to them because, she has nowhere to go.

All this is to say this is really creates interesting dynamics from a voice and movement perspective, right?

Because you’ve got class in there. So a big part of what we were working on with the actor who was playing Stanley is this is a person who is very much in his body, This is a person who is not gonna be kind of slumped or collapsed or this is like, I mean like doing a lot of animal work with him almost of just like, how do you move and how you gotta move in a way where people are intimidated by you that at any moment you could, you could be set off, right? 

There’s gotta be a danger to Stanley essentially. And we also, you know, in terms of accent, there were slight shifts, right? At the time. A more upper class Southern accent might sound a little different than a more lower class southern accent.

So that’s part of how we tell the story of class as we look at it through the language of accent, which is by the way, not as true in the US as it is in the uk. They have a much, uh, bigger history around that, and that’s really where my remit sits is within those two parts of the world. And then, you know, we would be looking at the language, which is, you know, on the one hand from Stanley, he’s a man of few words and on the other hand, we’ve got Stella or, or Blanche who, blanche is an English teacher. So, and by that I mean English literature teacher in high school. So she is just having this real flowery, if you will. language that can get really stilted really quickly. blanche is often played badly.

British bodies move very differently than southern bodies, right? Climate is very different there. It’s not as hot, right? 

So that’s something you’d have to consider too, is that in New Orleans is the summertime. Everybody is hot. So you’re gonna be moving differently. 

That’s gonna be affecting your voice, because how you power the voice is gonna be a little bit different. And at the same time, you’ve gotta stay, uh. Intentional. So that’s the difference between life and stage, right? If I’m just really hot in life, I can just let everything collapse.

I can’t do that on stage. I still, I have to tell you the story that everything is hot, but I still gotta send my sound with intention. Um, so that’s the, the type of things that, how we would work. ’cause we look at let’s do body. Okay, now let’s look at accent. And how the accent is gonna change the way that your mouth is moving, which is what accents do.

It’s just different movements within speech muscles. And then let’s own this language, like how are we gonna own this language? and then the final thing I’ll say about voice tone, which is kind of the one thing we haven’t spoken about, is that, All of these pieces then produce the tone of your voice, which in a historical piece tends to be clear, as in there’s no kind of vocal fry to it like this, like that.

Just that that’s a very modern vocal trend. if you know a, an actor were working that way, we would have to work on how are we gonna, how are we gonna work on your breathing in a way that helps that tone be clear.

Smiti: You gave me a lot to think about in terms of what makes a voice feel historical and you covered the elements really well, and I’m just curious what aspect of what you just talked about might be the most difficult or challenging, for, an actor, actress, or is that something that’s a bit individual?

Christine Adam I think it’s individual. I think it depends on training level and skillset. A lot of actors find accent very challenging. so that can definitely be a, a real roadblock. For, um, a lot of actors and often in, in productions, you have very limited time to work on an accent. so that, that can be something that can be challenging.

But I think owning the language can be just as challenging. And if you are a, a well trained doctor, then hopefully the breathing part comes easily, but often, you know when the pressure is on, that can start to to slip as well. So it really depends on, on the person, what their training level is and how embodied their training is.

Smiti: Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense

Christine Adam: Hmm

Smiti: So, to

Christine Adam: hmm.

Smiti: A little bit, you know, I’ve been thinking about, the media,

there feels like there’s, you know, a media voice. So when you tune into the news, or even on YouTube, people speak in a way that they might not speak in day-to-day life. And I was wondering, the history kind of behind that, and has it always been like this?

Christine Adam: It has, it has always been like this. Yes. So, radio was created in the 1930s and when it was created, radio announcers had several hats they had to wear because they basically did everything. They did the announcements, like the news announcements. Uh, they did the, the ads. So they would just read the ads.

There wouldn’t, you know, like today it’s like you’ve got separate ads, right? But they, they were the person who had to sell the product and they also had to be the person who knew about the music. If this was like a, a radio station with music, they had to be the person who would introduce the music.

And so the idea was that that person should have some showmanship and it was actually quite intentional that announcers should sound like somebody that you would only hear on the radio. So, um, this, this kind of sound was cultivated that was very much around like, I’m, I’m a kind of showman and a, a master of being able to wear different hats that has stuck with that industry and.

Yet at the same time, you know, now you, you wouldn’t coach somebody to sound like that. Right. So it’s definitely evolved over time and there has been a big push, I feel like, especially in the last 20 years, especially since the advent of podcasting. In addition to broadcasting, uh, there’s been a real advent around like, let’s try to sound as authentic as possible.

And so let, we don’t wanna sound like traditional radio hosts or traditional broadcast hosts. We don’t wanna sound like journalists. Uh, we want to sound like people who have some information and who are kind of friendly and trustworthy at the same time. And how do we, how do we find that balance? Um, and some of that has even filled back into some mainstream news media outlets.

I’m thinking like NPR, right? Which gets a lot of both praise and criticism for how some of their journalists tend to sound. I think something that’s important to understand about anybody who wants to be in a medium like this is that there does have to be some kind of art form and skillfulness to it because it’s just not the same thing as sitting and talking to a friend.

You might want your audience to feel like it is. That’s where the skillfulness comes in. But it’s not exactly the same thing. There are, there are certain factors that are in play and it’s very similar to the factors that are in play for actors. Actors wanna make you feel like you are just opening a window and seeing what’s happening inside somebody’s real life.

Right? But it’s not the same thing as real life. And what I mean by that is, in real life, if somebody doesn’t understand you, they can just say what? You get to repeat yourself. And that’s not true in these mediums, right? In these mediums, you don’t have the privilege of getting to repeat yourself. So you have to be totally clear as much as you have to be totally connected to what you’re saying.

Um, and that’s where the kind of skillfulness comes in, is how people can make it conversational and, and sound authentic, but also sound credible and interesting and completely clear.

Smiti: Gotcha. I think a big theme that’s coming through here is building trust with who. However your audience might be, and it seems that one of the current trends is speaking authentically, but of course, as you mentioned, there’s a skillfulness to it. So I’m kind of curious, what are some current trends in terms of building authenticity with your voice and how might that compare or contrast to how people build trust in the past?

Christine Adam: Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is like getting me excited to talk about this because this is such a, a great question because this word authenticity is thrown around a lot, and I don’t wanna be the negative Nancy in the room, but I’ll, I’ll just play the devil’s advocate that I think a lot of times. People use that word and it kind of becomes another mask you know, I’ll give an actor example.

Okay. So often when you’re working with young 18-year-olds who are coming in, who most of their frame of reference is movies and tv. And it’s not as much necessarily plays. And usually when you’re training actors, you start with plays because you wanna be able to stretch them. It’s just a harder skillset to be able to go big first and then you can come small.

so whereas if you’re always, if you only know how to do small, it’s harder to then go big, if that makes sense. So I say this to say that a lot of times, you know, you give them your first mon, their first monologue, and you’re like, all right, go away. Like, try some things, come back. You know, and everything they do is almost always like in this very narrow range, And it could be this monologue that says like, I love you. You’re the only one for me. And they’ll be like, I love you. You’re the only one for me. they, they just make very small choices in the name of, well, I wanna be real.

I wanna be authentic, and I totally get where it’s coming from. By the way, I wanna give the, these actors just some, some real credit that, you know, they’re responding to earlier traditions where, you know, things could be kind of soap operay and over the top, So, I get where they’re coming from, but I think sometimes this word real and authentic can be synonymous with, I’m not gonna try, I’m not gonna invest.

So how this might work with not an actor is, you know, while I’m, I’m, I’m, you know, I’m just, I’m not gonna let you know how I feel really about anything. I’m just gonna kind of speak like this and, um. You’re gonna have to interpret, but this feels authentic to me, right?

This feels real. But really it’s just a, a choice. It’s just a choice. If you think about the human voice and it’s totally uninhibited and unfettered form, then just listen to a baby. That’s what the human voice is. That is the power that it’s capable of, right? That the human voice is capable to stretch around three octaves, two to three octaves, and.

It is able to scream and cry and groan and, lament and laugh and exclaim with joy and, you know, all of the things that babies do, it’s available and able to do for hours on end without hurting yourself. Like that is possible. And that voice, if you were ever a baby. Then that voice lives inside of you.

Like that whole thing is your authentic voice. And anything else that we’re doing with our voices is, is habit of how we express ourselves.

Smiti: You gave us a good idea of what an authentic voice sounded historically in different time periods. what do

Christine Adam: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Smiti: Might have a future good or bad,

Christine Adam: Yeah.

Smiti: Between?

Christine Adam: I think that if we’re going with current trends, just of just human behavior, because human behavior is what impacts voice, right? So humans are more and more communicating in sedentary ways, We are often like communicating like on off, on screen to each other.

So I think we’re probably gonna continue to see vocal fry and things. So vocal fry is when your voice kind of has this little bit of a creek in it, right? I think we’re gonna continue to see that trend. And no matter how you feel about it, I think it’s, it’s gonna be around, and I think it’s gonna be around a lot because of how we hold ourselves is either collapsed or we often are holding in our bellies.

And when you hold in your belly, you, you inhibit your breathing process. So it doesn’t quite allow you to have the full breath power. Like again, if you watch a baby or if you watch a dog bark or something like that, like you’ll see the muscles working that need to work, that we then lock into place often because we’re trying to be thin.

You know, we have. Real cultural and social attitudes around size that can really impact the, the power of our voices. ’cause it cuts us off from breath. So I can imagine that, that those kind of things may continue to happen. I also think that in terms of speech patterns and trends, I think that our language will continue to, be expressed in shorter and shorter.

Chunks, let’s put it that way. So instead of kind of more long-winded sentences, I feel like things are getting kind of shorter and sharper, if you will, in terms of the rhythm of how we speak. I’m wondering if accent wise as well, that things will continue to get more homogenous. That’s definitely been the trend, especially since the advent of modern media, that that accents everywhere have kind of tended to move more towards homogenization because everybody’s listening to the same thing.

So I’m, I’m wondering if that also will continue to happen.

Smiti: Gotcha. So what do you hope listeners take away about not only how voices carry history, but also what that might mean for their own voice today?

Christine Adam: I want people to know that you have every single human who lives has the capacity for an incredibly powerful voice, and that you not only have it in this very moment, but you were born with it, your voice is, you know, as I said, if you have ever heard a baby cry. You used to do that, That used to be what your voice did on a regular basis. and that would, that’s important. That’s a survival skill. That’s all babies have is their voices. That’s all they have to communicate when they’re hungry or they’re tired or they need something. it’s not an accident. the voice comes first because the language isn’t developed yet, right?

The speech isn’t developed from birth, but the voice is there from birth so I think that first of all, that just know that however you’re feeling about your voice in this moment, that it has the capacity for an incredible amount of power, and connection. That it is a tool that we have unlike any other, that can create connection with others.

It can also, you know, to have the opposite impact, but if we want it to, it’s available to create connection with others. I used to have a voice teacher who said, you know, imagine a planet in which the creatures on it vibrated. And when they vibrated others around them had a sense of what their internal experience was and you’re living it.

That’s this planet and that’s us. That’s what we do. And then I guess the other, the, the final thing is, you know, just knowing that your voice is both a reflection, a, a, a personal history, really. It’s like a fingerprint. It’s your, you know, your body’s, personal history of where you come from, but also where you’ve lived, who your friends have been as much as who your family is, as well as a reflection.

Especially if you’re really letting it come out, you’re not kind of hiding it or holding it. A true reflection of, of how you feel right in this moment. And in, in that, it is something we have at our disposal that can help guide and show others how to feel, So if we’re, exploring a topic together, it’s one thing to, you know, send emails back and forth about it or to write a report about it and send it to each other.

It’s a totally different thing to talk about it. It’s a totally different thing because of the human voice and what it can do and how it can shift and shape and change how people think and feel about what they’re talking about.

Smiti: One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is the research reflection and skill development that go into crafting a voice, whether it’s for a historically specific role or how we show up in our day-to-day lives.

What also stood out to me is that this type of preparation and awareness doesn’t take away from authenticity. It actually supports it.

If you’d like to learn more about Christine’s work, you can check out her website, voicewhatmatters.com, as well as her YouTube channel and podcast. You’ll find those links in the show notes along with a link to a full transcript of this episode.

And if you’re curious to dig deeper and learn how Christine helps everyday folks like you and me, she shares that plus a number of free and affordable resources in our Patreon exclusive segment.

Our Patreon is free to join and gives you access to all of our extra content if you’d like to support the podcast monetarily, that’s always appreciated too. Thanks so much for listening and cultivating your curiosity with us.

We’ll see you soon.

Credits

Christine Adam: Guest

Noor Hanania: Theme Music Creator

Laura Riveiro: Podcast Cover Art Creator

Smiti Nathan: Host, Video Editor

Patreon Supporters

Thank you to our paid Patreon members for supporting the creation of this episode:

Nancy Fulton, James D., Giancarlo Annese, Thomas Martin, Stuart A. Griffin, Tagg, Ann Brookens, Diana Madden, Cole Guinn

Other Content You Might Enjoy