Zoë praises the 'warmth and gentleness' of RSC's renowned voice director, Cicely Berry

24 December 2014 03:09

Zoë appears briefly in the penultimate episode of Portrait Artist of the Year 2014, broadcast yesterday on Sky Arts 1 and currently available on Sky Go. She praises the work of Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company's renowned voice director, whose portrait was painted by one of the competition's finalists, the talented Aine Divine.

'She made language, for me, rich and fluid and sexy,' Zoë remarks about Berry, who has worked with the RSC for forty-five years and in 2000 was awarded The Sam Wanamaker Prize for pioneering work in theatre. 'Her eyes are full of warmth and gentleness. There is a wonderful gentleness, and there's a wit,' she adds.

While performing a variety of Shakespearean and other roles for the RSC, during the late 1970s and 80s, Zoë worked extensively with the voice director on such notable stage productions as Piaf (1978), Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors (both 1983).

Zoe has previously spoken about Berry's voice coaching work as part of a 2011 feature about the voice director on the BBC's regional current affairs series, Inside Out (as shown in the video below). In the feature Berry is seen leading a workshop about Shakespeare's use of language in order to inspire Wolverhampton teenagers.

Berry's methods encourage actors to feel language physically. As a result, a play's 'language becomes part of you,' Zoe explains in the programme. She fondly recalls 'the joy of that [experience]'.

perma-linktweet this