The Voice of Ophelia

Abstract

In earlier issues, New Theatre Quarterly has followed through several lines of enquiry into the processes of acting and the construction of critical methods appropriate to the analysis of contemporary performance. Articles on the work of Tilda Swinton (NTQ23) and Harriet Walters (NTQ34) for example, focused on the consciousness and techniques of those actresses. But the work of Odin Teatret, complemented (as in this issue) by the theoretical writings of its director, Eugenio Barba, has been a recurrent concern – most recently in the exploration in NTQ26 by Roberta Carreri of the technical means through which her role in Judith was articulated. Here, Janne Risum pulls together several related lines of enquiry by considering the performance of Julia Varley in the Castle of Holstebro, her vocal demonstration workshop The Echo of Silence, and her written piece, A Candle Lit amongst the Pages of Books, as related aspects of perception through which the female spectator engages with the actress and her fictive personae. Janne Risum teaches in the Institut for Dramaturgi at Aarhus University, Denmark, and is also active in the International School for Theatre Anthropology. She has published books and essays on acting, theatre history, and women in the theatre. A version of the present paper has also appeared, in Danish, in Nordic Theatre Studies, VI, No. 3 (1993).