Nobody uses the honorific First Lady of the American Theatre anymore. You still heard it when actors like Helen Hayes were active and even as late as the 1990s when Jessica Tandy was still working. But were it trotted out now, there'd be only one leading candidate -- by virtue of her devotion to the stage in preference to movies and by dint of her back-to-back assignments and astonishing attendance record. The standalone contender is Marian Seldes.
A favorite of Edward Albee and Terrence McNally, Seldes is in her seventh decade of treading the New York boards and has performed with a couple of generations of actors. She's been influenced by and has influenced many voices. Call her to set up an appointment to talk about experiences she's had and observations she's made as actor and teacher, and the voice you hear on the line is dulcet, musical. There's seduction in the "darling" she insinuates into her responses. You know you're on to something.
When she arrives for the interview, settles into a couch, and leans expectantly forward to speak, the voice remains lutelike but with an element of urgency added. Asked about the voices she's noticed over the years, she responds, "I think the first time I was ever really conscious of the difference between people's voices was that my mother's voice was so soft and gentle and her pronunciation was so perfect. In my family, you had to pronounce things perfectly and use grammar perfectly. I got so used to my parents' voices and loved them so much. My father's voice was very deep and confiding and warm and enthusiastic -- a far more dramatic voice than my mother's, really." (Seldes' father was cultural critic and Dial editor Gilbert Seldes, whom she regularly credits with her theatre grounding.)
"I grew up in a house where language was appreciated and cared about," she continues. "I'm sure that although I wasn't aware of it at the time, it must have made an impression on me. And I couldn't help but notice that the other voices out there -- in school and on the street and even on the radio -- weren't as nice. I've never thought of that before, but your question makes me think of it. I can remember the voices of my mother's friends. I could do them for you, so to speak, and they were fascinating. The way you describe somebody and you talk about their eyes, their smile -- my memory of these particular women was also the sounds of their voices."
Brought up in Manhattan, Seldes attended the Dalton School, traditionally considered progressive. "When I began to act, I was about 6 years old. Everything you learned, every period of history you studied, you did a play about it." But, she emphasizes, "My father was the first person who spoke to me about my voice. He knew I wanted to be an actress. I, of course, can't remember what I sounded like when I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, but he knew I had to think about making [my voice] better. He never taught me. He said that a voice in the theatre had to carry and had to use the words more carefully and so on. I never forgot it, and I thought that the actresses that I admired most had beautiful voices."
Seldes instantly names Katharine Cornell as one of those memorable voices. But then she adds, "It's easier for me to say from the other point of view that when someone's voice is dull, it bothers me very much. I mean this whether on film and television or in life. If there's no music or no intention or no energy, it's hard to remain interested for a long period of time." Thinking about that, Seldes says the use of the voice has diminished because of the microphone: "Most of these [young] actors have microphones on them, but they don't realize you still have to have the energy to reach a huge auditorium."
Changing How You Sound
Seldes' formal training began at the Neighborhood Playhouse. "There were wonderful speech teachers there," she vividly remembers. "That was the first time that I can ever remember being taught to work on my voice, to do vocal exercises and so on. Before that, at Dalton, even if I got wonderful parts in the plays, it was up to me. But people were very kind to me about my voice, and I thought, I'm speaking the way my mother speaks. It had nothing to do with acting. It had to do with making a sound that has some music in it."
Reflecting further on the Neighborhood Playhouse, she says, "One of the first things that happened in the first speech class was to make a recording of our voices on tape, and I had never done that or heard of it. When I heard my own voice, that taught me more than anything else. I didn't like it. It sounded affected to me and odd and too high-pitched. I made up my mind I was going to fix that. I think I did in the course of the training. As soon as you get an idea about how you sound, you can intend a different sound to come out of you. I promise you, if there were other people in this room who'd never been interested in the theatre or anything, if you give me 20 minutes with them, I could help them talk in a voice that's more pleasing by just interesting them in the process of taking a deeper breath and of connecting more deeply with the person you want to talk to."
Having taught acting -- or, as she prefers, teamed with actors -- at Juilliard for some 25 years, Seldes says, "I was never a teacher of voice and speech. If I talk about voice in an acting class -- if I think the young actor needs help or if we're working on a play we're going to do and the actor is going to perform -- I suggest things about the character that will make the actor think about how he or she sounds. For a director or a teacher to go into the area of the voice with a young actor, you have to be very careful.
"If you are connected at a school with wonderful voice and speech teachers, go to them and say, 'I'm concerned about this one. What do you think about that?' I rely on other teachers. I'm certainly not afraid to say to a group of young actors that variety is one of the key words, in a long play particularly. You want to play the words the way a musician plays the notes, the score -- especially in a play of Edward Albee's. You would be a fool not to consider that the script is a score. His punctuation is so careful and helpful that if you really use it, it's almost as if he's saying, 'Breathe now. This should be louder.' ...I certainly talk in a general way about speech, and I certainly talk about being heard. But that's different. That's a technical thing, and it's a demand you can make without making an actor nervous. You have to be able to be heard. That's all there is to it. I'll certainly say, if I'm directing a classic play, 'I think if you took a breath there, the whole meaning would be clearer.' That's not threatening in any way. That's just helping."
What about how Seldes uses her own voice now? Does she use it differently for drama in contrast to comedy? "No. If I do, I don't think about it or plan it. Of course, I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays -- even great tragedies -- have enormous humor in them. A human being, which is what you are showing to the audience, speaks. That's just understood."
Seldes adds, "You can see that I don't think speaking is trivial. I think it's very important. Everything I'm talking to you about are things that matter.
David Finkle can be reached at finkleDR@aol.com.