Two Opposite Animals? Voice, Text, and Gender on Stage.

Abstract

Two Opposite Animals? Voice, Text, and Gender on Stage Pamela R. Hendrick (bio) MEG. Maybe it really is true that we’re so different that we’ll never be able to get certain things across to each other. Like mother used to say. BAYLOR. Your mother. MEG. “Two opposite animals.” BAYLOR. Your mother was a basket case. MEG. She was a female. —Sam Shepard, A Lie of the Mind (97) For those of us who subscribe to the theory that much of gendered behavior is a learned performance, the examination of gender on stage is a fascinating, often disturbing, study in metatheatre. Within the framework of traditional theatre, actors are often called upon to overstate and essentialize the performance of binary male and female roles in a manner that highlights how we construct the performance of “male” and “female” off stage as well as on. Indeed, in the world of theory, history, and criticism, the body of literature about issues of gender on stage has grown explosively in recent years. But what about practice? If theatre artists—actors, directors, and designers—wish to challenge or transform the traditional representations of gender on stage (and we often do), if we are to approach the performance of myriad crossgender roles with integrity and an eye towards true virtuosity, we should better comprehend and define what we are performing. Over the past several years in my roles as a director and actor trainer, I have worked to define more specifically the details of what we receive as masculine and feminine behavior, and to apply my findings to performance. My continuing fascination with gender informs my work both in crossgender performance and in challenging student actors, both male and female, to widen their gestural and vocal vocabularies in defiance of the constructed limits of their gendered identities. Although initially I studied the relationship of gesture and movement to gender, my purpose in this article is to examine gender differences in vocal communication, concentrating on intonation, pitch, and syntax. [End Page 113] At the beginning of this investigation of vocal communication, I assumed that an examination of variations in how we use our voices to convey gender would chiefly address the phonology (the pitch and intonation patterns) of masculine and feminine language. To this end, I turned first to the work of theatre voice specialists. However, the paucity of information from this quarter compelled me to broaden my investigation to the field of linguistics, where I discovered that syntax (the manner in which we structure our words) also plays an extremely important role in the gendering of speech. Linguistic research, coupled with my work with actors, readily revealed that phonological and grammatical variables are often so intertwined as to be inseparable. Therefore, simple alterations in intonation and pitch lead only to partial and inadequate “gendering.” Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to begin with a look at the observations of theatre voice specialists since they provide empirical support for the more analytical linguistic research that follows. The few references to gender in the standard literature that focus on training the actor’s voice address limited aspects of phonology. 1 In particular, Cicely Berry, Kristin Linklater, and Michael McCallion cite women’s tendency to use an isolated head voice and men’s to use an isolated chest voice. All three attribute this tendency to the often-unconscious cultural inhibitions actors experience when deviating from masculine or feminine norms. In The Voice Book, Michael McCallion points out that while most of the adult male range lies within the chest voice and most of the adult female range lies within the head voice, the two do, and should, overlap. However, women and men sometimes resist the full use of their vocal range. McCallion asserts, “I have known cases of women who, while able to use the chest voice for singing, have had an antipathy to using it for speaking and have confined themselves to the head voice” (93). McCallion also points out that men are “often reluctant to begin from the falsetto because they regard it as the enemy” (96). Although McCallion does not analyze the social causes behind the common reluctance of his male students to explore the falsetto...