Cicely Berry

Cicely Berry

Cicely Frances Berry CBE (born May 17, 1926) is the voice director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and is world-renowned in her work as a voice and text coach, having spent many years as an instructor at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. She has conducted workshops all over the globe, including Korea, Russia, and Asia. Her work has also extended to prisons, using Shakespeare as a vessel to find confidence in speaking and response to imagery. One of her earliest teachers was Barbara Bunch. She stated her thoughts about her own work in New Theatre Quarterly saying that, “I see my job as intrinsically to do the following: (i) through exercises to open out the voice itself so that the actor finds her/his true potential – after all, do not singers train? (ii) by working on text – hearing and listening – to give the actor choice, and power over that choice” (1997, 48). She talks about being able to find pleasure in being articulate through Shakespeare and poetry. It puts actors in touch with their imagination, and therefore, can lead them to their own greater self-awareness. Cicely Berry’s exercises tend to be based on resistance and rougher, physical work. One of her favorite quotes is from Thomas Kyd’s play The Spanish Tragedy: “Where words prevail not, violence prevails.”

In addition to her extensive voice and text work in the theatre, she has also done significant work in film. Including serving as "dialogue coach" on The Last Emperor (1987); "dialogue coach" on Stealing Beauty (1996); and as "voice specialist" on Julie Taymor's 1999 film, Titus.