The Adventures and Challenges of Trailblazing the Linklater Voice Work in China

Abstract

In 2018, I became the first teacher of Linklater Voice to teach the work in China in Mandarin. As fate would have it, I was and still am the first and only Designated Linklater Voice Teacher to blaze the trail in this country and who is able to teach it in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. I was admitted as a foreign staff at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, one of China’s top (or as the faculty would like to repeatedly tell me) the top drama school within the country, with around 15,000 yearly applicants applying to their BFA Acting program of 40 spaces. Despite the initial fanfare, these facts had many implications for me as a voice teacher, and this brings me to my list of challenges. The challenges are different and conflicting pedagogical material, different and conflicting teaching styles, having to learn Mandarin on the job, and students not being able to apply what they were learning in my voice classes within their Meisner acting classes. After detailing each challenge, I will discuss what solutions I came up with.