New voice coach takes holistic approach to stage craft

“The great speed at which society is moving forces us to grab air,” she says. “We can’t really concentrate on the space we’re in, or on what the other person is saying. We physically can’t pay attention.”

Indeed, inhaling life — as well as breath — in full measure is Sweeney’s leitmotif.

Having trained with renowned voice/speech coach Edith Skinner, Sweeney takes an approach to vocal stage craft that goes far beyond searching for the illusive pear-shaped tone. Instead, to enhance the voice she marshals the entire body, including and, perhaps especially, the mind.

Sweeney draws heavily upon bioenegetics, a blend of body work and psycho- therapy; yoga; the Alexander method, which reduces body tension by re-educating habitual physical alignments, primarily in the neck; Feldenkrais movement training, which employs sensory awareness to help people recognize habits of movement and posture; the “extended voice” techniques of the Roy Hart Theatre of France, which explores the impact of the voice on the person and the performance; and singing. Sweeney taught for eight years with the UW-Milwaukee theater faculty. When the University of Delaware sought to import rather than build an actor training program in 1989, Sweeney made the move with almost the entire UWM faculty, 12 in all. She taught at UD’s Professional Theatre Training Program until May.

She’s also freelanced as a voice, text and dialects coach for the Illinois, Colorado, Oregon and Utah Shakespeare festivals; Baltimore Center Stage; Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk; Philadelphia Drama Guild; Milwaukee Repertory Theatre; the Jujamcyn Theatre Organization in New York; and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. In addition, she has been resident voice and text coach for American Players Theatre in Spring Green since 2001.

Sweeney knows well what actors, be they professional or student, are going through as they construct their roles. Having appeared in the roles of Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd,” Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” Linda Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” Goneril in “King Lear,” and Dorine in “Tartuffe” for such companies as the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Skylight opera, and the Great Lakes and Utah Shakespeare Festivals, Sweeney believes it is critical that stage actors fully grasp the energy, discipline and technique required to bring a character to life on the stage.

“I think the key is dynamism, making it possible to create the illusions which demand the audience use their imaginations,” she says. “It’s more than just expressing one’s self, using the role as a vehicle. A great stage performance will convince you that the world the playwright has conceived is really up there on that stage right now.”

Sweeney says she’s just recently seen two of the most memorable stage performances she has ever witnessed in a production of Eugene Ionesco’s “The Chairs,” with Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan.

“They acted as if the whole world consisted of the disjointed reality presented on that stage, and they made me see it that way, too,” no mean feat since the play rejects a linear construction, literal setting or conventional plot structure, she says.

This semester Sweeney will teach a course in Shakespeare and another voice class, following her two voice courses last semester. She characterizes her teaching style as “evolving and responsive.”

“I used to plan every minute of every class to the last detail,” she says. “Now I go in ready to listen and improvise, developing the class out of the manner in which the students respond to the material.

“And yes, I do remember to breathe.”

Above photo: Dan Swartz, in foreground at right, and other students practice tongue and jaw exercises in a mirror. Photo: Jeff Miller