The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Legendary voice guru, aged 92
Internationally renowned voice coach Cicely Berry has died at the age of 92 in a care home in Cornwall. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1969, becoming head of voice the following year, and making the RSC the first company ever to have a permanent full-time voice department. Paying tribute to her, RSC artistic director Gregory Doran last night said: “She had a founding role in the tradition of modern voice teaching. “Her influence today, not only on the acting community in this country and around the world and on generations of directors, but on the way we transform young lives by introducing her rehearsal working methods into the classroom through our education work, is immense.” He added: “Her personality of course had much to do with her influence. “Her openness combined with a sharp determination; her dedication to the work, her intellectual rigour and lively curiosity; her abiding concern for the interests of actors and her sense of mischief made her hugely popular. “She was radical and subversive, playful and provocative, utterly unsentimental, and rigorously unpretentious.” Ms Berry worked with many of Hollywood’s biggest stars including Sean Connery, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Irons, Emily Watson and Kenneth Branagh. In 1988, she directed her own version of King Lear which Mr Doran said was “a startlingly fresh production”, adding: “It viscerally connected to the power of words, which honoured the violence and physicality of the text.” Mr Doran said her “last encounter” with the RSC had been on the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, when she conducted a warm up for his own production of the Tempest in 2016. Describing her working methods fondly, he said: “Sparrowthin and supported on her stick, she had the actors running around the space connecting to every corner of the theatre. “They were filling their breath down into their lungs and deep into their bodies, preparing them to connect to the task. “She was frequently described as a legendary voice guru and though she always hated that description, it describes her perfectly.”