Chapter 11
Eleven
I ARRIVED IN THE rehearsal room with a minute to spare.
‘You’re cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you,’ Jolly whispered, as I lay down on the parquet beside him and began stretching out my aching hamstrings.
‘My alarm didn’t go off.’
‘Even Victoria was here before you.’
I glanced over to where she stood stretching her arms above her head in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
At that moment, our teacher walked in.
Casper Drake was the head of voice at the school. He had a clipped South African accent and the guru-like intensity of a wellness instructor.
‘Good morning, actors. Form a circle, please.’
I dragged myself up off the floor.
Casper disliked us. Well, most of us. He somehow found it in his heart to love any students who came from acting families of renown.
His eyes twinkled whenever Tiff, for example, asked a question, her being some long-distant progeny of the Redgrave dynasty.
Despite his obvious disdain for young people, the second- and third-years assured us he was an excellent voice coach.
Casper had trained under Cicely Berry’s guidance at the Royal Shakespeare Company, a fact he seemed at pains to remind us of whenever possible.
‘Come on, chop, chop.’ He clapped his hands.
We gathered around him.
‘Good. Let’s begin.’ He stared around the room. His nostrils flared. ‘Why do we scream?’
At first, no one spoke. Last week Poppy had given an incorrect answer about where the diaphragm was located, and Casper had berated her to the point of tears.
Finally, when no one else volunteered, Victoria raised her hand. ‘Because we’re afraid?’
‘Excellent, Victoria. Yes. Anyone else?’
‘We’re shocked.’
‘We’re excited.’
‘Good, yes.’ He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘The world provides a stimulant, and the brain and body respond by making a noise.’ He looked around the room. ‘Tell me, can anyone remember the last time they screamed?’
After a few seconds, Maddy, a pale, orange-haired girl, raised her hand. ‘I saw a spider the other week.’
‘And did you scream?’
‘Well, no. I think I sort of gasped.’
‘Hmm.’ Casper shook his head. ‘That is because your voice is trapped. You’ve grown used to subduing your natural impulses and now your responses are dulled, your inner life is incomplete.
’ He addressed the rest of us. ‘You’re watchful and uncertain, disconnected from your basest impulses.
Babies scream. Babies scream all the time.
They cry and laugh freely too, but as we grow, these impulses are quashed.
We’re told to keep silent, to stop crying, to not be so afraid, to not laugh quite so loudly.
And with each command, our emotional inner life is dulled ever further.
The only way many people now access these emotions is through short-circuiting their secondary impulses by, for example, putting themselves in the way of extreme fear or ecstasy. ’
Outside, the sun disappeared behind a cloud.
‘Many of the characters you’ll play in your careers will be people at the extremes of their emotional life.
You might play the Dane contemplating taking his uncle’s life, or Medea driven to murder her entire family.
That is why freeing your caged voices is of the utmost importance.
’ He looked around the room at us. ‘And we begin today. May I have a volunteer?’
He waited. No one raised their hand.
‘Very well. Ms Madeleine, our arachnophobe.’ Casper gestured towards the centre of the circle. ‘If you please.’
Maddy stepped forward.
‘When was the last time you were frightened? And I’m not talking about creepy crawlies.’
‘Erm, I – I don’t know.’
‘Don’t stammer, please. This is a voice class. I won’t abide stammering.’
‘Sorry.’
‘When were you last frightened?’
Maddy stared down, searching the floor for an answer.
‘I don’t know, like maybe just over a year ago?’
‘Good, go on.’ Casper took a step forward.
‘It was, well, I was walking home from school – erm, from college – sorry.’
‘That’s quite all right.’ Casper came forward and placed one of his hands on her lower back, the other on her belly.
I saw her stiffen.
‘Please continue.’
‘I was walking home from college and I felt like I was being followed.’
‘Yes?’
‘And I looked behind me to see who it was, but I couldn’t quite tell. It was dark. It was winter. There weren’t many cars on the road.’
Maddy glanced sideways. Casper pressed his palms against her middle.
‘Carry on,’ he murmured in her ear, ‘and think from your diaphragm.’
‘And I don’t know, I thought it might be my – my uncle.’
‘Don’t stammer.’
‘Sorry – I thought it might be him. And we, well, we don’t see him any more, my family, we don’t talk to him any more ever since – sorry, no, this isn’t about that – I, I wasn’t sure who it was behind me, whether it was him or not, so I started running.’
We were all silent, frozen in place.
‘I – I started running and I ran in the direction of home and – I don’t know – I thought I could hear him running after me, I didn’t know if it was my feet or his, but it was so loud, it was so loud, I thought he was right behind me. And – and I, I was fumbling for my keys—’
She began to cry.
‘Good, good,’ Casper whispered, his face inches from hers. ‘Let it out.’
‘And I – I dropped them and I bent down and picked them up and just kept running and running and I couldn’t breathe and it felt like he was right behind me, like I could feel him behind me, he’s a bad man, not a good man, and I knew I still had so far to run and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe and – I can’t breathe – sir, I can’t breathe. ’
‘You can breathe. You’re letting it all out. This is good.’
‘No – no – please, I can’t breathe.’
‘You’re connecting to your inner life. You’re doing wonderfully.’
‘Please – please, sir – please—’
‘Sir’ – Obi stepped forward – ‘I think she’s having a panic attack.’
Casper let go of Maddy and wheeled round to face him. ‘She is not having a panic attack, she is having a natural vocal reaction to intense fear, she is learning to uncage her voice. Do not ever presume to tell me how to teach my lessons, young man.’
Obi replaced his hands in his pockets and took a step back.
Casper crossed his arms and waited. Maddy stood in the centre of the circle, bent at the waist. We watched in silence as her shoulders heaved up and down, hiccupping sobs escaping with every breath.
‘That’s it.’ Casper pursed his lips. ‘You’re fine now.
’ He cleared his throat. ‘Do you see what happened? What we just witnessed was Maddy nearly accessing her true voice. We short-circuited her impulse to hide her feelings away and accessed a more truthful place in her vocal range.’ His lip curled into a smile.
‘There now. Don’t you feel better after that?
’ Casper gave Maddy a light pat on the back. ‘Cathartic, yes?’