LINKLATER TEACHER TRAINING AND DESIGNATION (USA)
European queries should go to Michael Petermann linklatercenter.eu
UK teacher-training is in the planning stages

The Linklater Designation Certificate is recognized in academic and artistic departments as a guarantee of excellence in teaching.

Designated Linklater Teachers are trained to teach the following material:

The full progression of voice training as described in Kristin Linklater’s books: Freeing the Natural Voice (pub: 1976); Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language (pub: 2007.)

The embodiment of breath, voice and language in interpreting texts.

An approach to speaking Shakespeare that awakens imagination and emotion through the practice of verse and rhetoric (see Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text by Kristin Linklater pub: 1992.)

The connection of voice with physical training and with leading actor-training methods.

Group classes and private work.

Many Linklater Teachers have adapted the work for presentational training in the business and corporate world, to educational fields and to working in out-reach social programs and prisons.

The Linklater Teacher Training Designation Process:
Though there are different paths to designation they all take at least 3 years and costs may add up to $20,000. Costs break down to the following categories:

Private Lessons
Shakespeare & Company Workshop
Linklater Center Courses and Workshops
Teacher Training Days with Andrea Haring
Linklater Designation Program (5-week intensive)
Miscellaneous Lessons in Alexander, Feldenkreis, Piano

Several of our teachers enhance their Linklater Designation status with academic credentials earned through ‘create-your-own’ Masters programs and universities without walls such as the Gallatin Institute at NYU and Goddard College. Foreign students often apply to the Fulbright Foundation as a financial sponsor for their training.

The Requirements for Candidacy:
Personal training in the Linklater Technique.
Bodywork disciplines such as Alexander and Feldenkreis.
Some training in singing, speech, acting classes, anatomy.
Performance experience.
(For a full description of the requirements see below)

The Process:
The teacher training happens on several levels:

1-on-1 private sessions with a senior Linklater Teacher

Observation of a senior Linklater Teacher, (ideally Kristin Linklater at Columbia University) teaching the full voice progression. This normally constitutes a commitment to a full semester.

Meeting in weekend or one-day teacher training workshops with Andrea Haring

Auditioning for the final Designation workshop with Kristin Linklater and if accepted …..

The Intensive 5-week Designation Workshop where Kristin Linklater checks your understanding of every aspect of the work, observes and critiques the quality of your teaching and monitors and adjusts your personal teaching energy.

It is important that you not only understand the Linklater work conceptually but can embody it in your own voice and body. As a teacher you must be able to teach the vocal progression in a clear and organic way as well as be able to diagnose the needs of your class as a group and as individuals. Since the Linklater work evokes responses psychophysically along the neural/musculature pathways, it is important that as a teacher you are aware and conscious in your own emotional, psychological and physical responses.

It is possible that you may not be accepted into the final Designation workshop even after completing the requirements. Sometimes we encourage a trainee to work more deeply but there are times when we discourage them from auditioning because they are not representing the work in themselves.

How to Begin:
If this process is one that you think you can commit to then the most important part is to begin to take classes or workshops regularly to condition your voice and refine your knowledge of the progression of voice exercises.
You should contact Andrea Haring either by email (mail@thelinklatercenter.com) or by phone (212-340-4762). We will talk and set up a program of study and assign you to work with as many of our teachers as possible. It is important to write a formal letter of introduction, including your resume, with a request to train as a teacher to Kristin Linklater (with a copy to me for the records).

At this time there are approximately 130 Linklater Designated Teachers worldwide. We are a close community that loves to meet, talk over teaching issues on our yahoo chat group and offer support to each other. We try to have a reunion every three or four years or so to get reacquainted and discuss issues. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions.

Andrea Haring
Coordinator of Linklater Teacher Training

Associate Director
The Linklater Center
For Voice and Language

REQUIREMENTS FOR LINKLATER CERTIFICATION
AS A FREEING THE NATURAL VOICE DESIGNATED TEACHER

1. One-on-one private sessions with a senior Linklater teacher, learning the entire progression of exercises for Freeing the Natural Voice (about 50 hours). The mentoring teacher must write a note stating that you have completed the progression including an evaluation of your work.
2. Observe a senior teacher teaching the entire progression. (It is preferable to do this with one teacher over the course of the year but may be accomplished in sections with several teachers.)
3. Participate in Voice and Text Workshops at The Linklater Center or the month long Intensive at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA
4. Attend 3 or more one-day teacher training workshops with Andrea.
5. Go as a teacher trainee to the Linklater Center or S & Co. workshops.
6. The final certification workshop with Kristin. (By invitation only)

There are really four phases to teacher training:
Practical:
1. Working on personal growth and transforming your personal connection to your voice.
Theoretical:
2. Observing and notating the work as a trainee.
3. Assistant teaching
4. Practice teaching the work and being observed as a teacher. A critique of your teaching as regards your understanding of the work and teaching energy leads to your acceptance to the certification workshop.

Once these requirements have been fulfilled you will be eligible to interview/audition for selection for the final teacher training certification/designation workshop with Kristin Linklater. The weekend selection process will consist of being observed teaching a 20 minute section of the progression, performing a monologue and a song, and an interview. It is possible that even though you have completed the requirements that you will still not be invited to the certification workshop.

Prerequisites:
Know the progression of Trish Arnold movement work (this is all the spinal work, and arm and leg work with swings that Kristin uses to complement the voice work)
Alexander Technique
Feldenkreis
Piano (enough confidence to be able to play triads and arpeggios)
An understanding of singing techniques – preferably Roy Hart
Anatomy – comprehension of the anatomy of voice and breath
Workshop with Louis Colaianni’s Joy of Phonetics for speech
Understanding issues surrounding Vocal Health

Acting experience - whether professionally or otherwise. It is essential that candidates have personal experience of performance.
(There is leeway given geographical limitations which can be discussed.)

Please go to thelinklatercenter.com for details and registration

FREEING THE POEM’S VOICE
A class for poets, poetry speakers and poetry lovers

This poetry-speaking class will focus on voice and the joy of encompassing many different poetic styles and forms. The class content ranges from John Donne to the Romantics to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and will culminate in contemporary work. Seven sessions lead to a final poetry performance open to the public. A 45-minute voice warm-up precedes each class and is required for all participants.

Tuesdays 7pm to 10pm (voice warm-up - 6:10 to 6:55)
September 18 to November 6

FREEING THE POEM’S VOICE
Kristin Linklater offers a class for poets, poetry speakers and poetry lovers

George Bernard Shaw said:
“…I say, with all solemnity, leave blank verse alone until you have experienced emotion deep enough to crave for poetic expression, at which point verse will seem an absolutely natural and real form of speech to you. Meanwhile if any pedant with an uncultivated heart and a theoretic ear proposes to teach you to recite, send instantly for the police.”

With all due humility I offer an ear, a heart and a voice cultivated by years of practice in speaking poetry to fellow lovers of verse-speaking. We will start with John Donne because he demands a passionate heart. Over 7 sessions we will continue to encompass as many different styles, forms and periods as possible culminating in contemporary poetry. At this juncture I can promise Byron, Keats, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gerard Manley Hopkins, ee cummings, Emily Dickinson and a session devoted to ballads. All poetry starts with emotion (“recollected in tranquility” as Wordsworth says), but, in the words of Louis MacNeice, “In any poet’s poem, the shape is half the meaning.” We will exercise the expression of different forms.

The 8th evening will be an informal performance open to the public.

Because VOICE is the instrument of the heart and is an essential element in a poem’s transmission (we HEAR the poet’s voice even when we read a poem silently) there will be a 45-minute voice warm-up class immediately prior to the poetry session. This is a requirement for all participants.

Linklater Center
PO Box 504, New York, NY 10025
Phone: (212) 340-4762
mail@thelinklatercenter.com · www.thelinklatercenter.com

For everyday living breathe through your nose — for speaking and singing breathe through your mouth. It’s obvious really; the small hairs in the nasal passages warm and filter the ingoing air which may make breathing in a crowd of people more healthy. But people like to have rules and one often hears categorical statements such as “It’s unhealthy to breathe in through your mouth, and it dries the throat.” The flipside of that is “Breath goes in quicker through the mouth therefore it’s practical (essential) for speaking and singing. The throat soon adjusts, and when the throat relaxes breath passes through the space without irritating the throat walls.” I think the “unhealthy” idea comes more from the social judgment that a “mouth-breather” is stupid. Actors soon learn that breathing through the mouth gives them more direct access to their emotions and a more spontaneous responsiveness to a scene partner. Of course, you might then play a character who is definitely a “nose-breather!” Experiment…

One other point: I often hear people say “You breathe much more deeply when you breathe through the nose.” Not true! You may have the perception that you breathe more deeply because the breathing muscles have to work harder to draw air in through the long narrow passages of the nose. But for a really deep-down ingoing breath (particularly if you need it fast) an open mouth and throat process the air much more effectively and directly.

Is there any part of the progression of exercises that puzzles you?
Ask me.

When you decide to seriously work on your voice be sure to find a Designated Linklater Teacher.

Breathing exercises should always be practiced with feeling and imagination  -  never mechanically.