About The Event

This immersive workshop encourages authenticity, emotional freedom, and personal expression through voice and text work. It aims to restore your natural capacity to reveal the full range of human vocal expression without strain. The process will develop your physical awareness, encourage breathing that is in direct contact with emotional impulse, and look at how to develop the natural power of your voice. You will then explore how the raw material of your emotional life can act as a rich vocal resource and give life to the words on the page.

​ The workshop is open for everyone and fits all levels of actors, performers, and public speakers. It draws heavily on Ben's qualification as a designated teacher of Kristin Linklater's voice method, and his experience as an international acting and speaking coach.

It will gently focus on the removal of the psychological and physical blocks that inhibit the human instrument when we speak. Once the voice is free it can respond more accurately to the emotional and imaginative demands of the performer/speaker.

 

​"To Free the Voice is to Free the Person!” - Kristin Linklater

 

TO WHOM THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR?

For actors (both advanced and beginners), performers, directors, artists, coaches, and anyone wanting to understand how movement, voice and language can be used for authentic performance (on stage or off!). For anyone wanting to free and trust their authentic voice. For anyone wanting to create more freedom, openness and connection in themselves. For anyone wanting to learn about the Kristin Linklater Method and truthful presence. Also great for directors, writers, artists and creatives.

WHAT DO YOU GET?
Through this workshop you will:

• Deepen your capacity to really understand yourself and your voice

• Leave with tools and techniques to speak any text of your choosing without feeling fake!
• Develop more power, skill and awareness when working with your body in performance.
• Find freedom and ease in your breathing.
• Find more nuance and depth of feeling through the resonance and range of your voice.
• Find natural clarity when speaking and use language animate your message.
• Strengthen your instincts and capacity to respond to emotional impulse.
• Improve your sensitivity to others while listening.
• Find healthy and organic ways to let go of misplaced effort and tension.
• Learn how to use the text to support a more authentic performance.
• Connect your own ‘truth’ with the form and structure of the text.
• Use the clues the writer has offered you to understand the character.
• Teacher/coach/director? You will get highly applicable tools and approaches on how to help actors connect with text and help realise their best performance.

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​The workshop will be conducted in English but you are welcome to bring material to work on that is in the language you feel most comfortable with.

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INFO

• Price: 285€ incl. vat

• Time: 11.-12.11.2024 / Monday & Tuesday 16:00 - 21:00  
• Location: Actors Academy Studio Pursimiehenkatu 26H, Helsinki

• Place is limited and will be filled on 'first-come first-serve basis'.

• The booking for all events and workshops is binding. You can cancel 30 days prior the event and receive a 50% return of your payment or you can pass on your spot to another person without an extra fee.

• Teaching language is English (Please keep in mind that you do not need to have perfect English skills, and you do not need to worry about accent and pronunciation).

• No previous experience needed, the course is open to anyone.

• All rights to changes reserved.

• You can find the event on Facebook in this link here.

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ABOUT BEN JOINER
Ben is a voice and movement coach who works with individuals, groups and institutions globally. He originally trained as a dancer in the early nineties, touring internationally with various modern dance companies before retraining as an actor in 2000. He then worked extensively in theatre, film and television before retraining as a voice coach. He now coaches on the MA in Voice Studies at The Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, London…and is one of approximately 250 vocal coaches worldwide trained by Kristin Linklater to teach her method ‘Freeing the Natural Voice'. In 2022 he completed a four-year accreditation to be a Feldenkrais practitioner,(a system of somatic learning), which forms part of his lifelong fascination with the body/mind relationship and its role in human behaviour and communication. In recent years, he has been coaching at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, The Oxford School of Drama, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, Arts Educational Schools and the Actor’s Temple. He coaches for theatre companies, independent arts groups and has a regular list of individual clients both artistic and corporate.
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TESTIMONIALS
 

Was a great pleasure working with Ben. He had such a gentle but professional approach to voice training through movement. Through Ben’s training I found - and started to release - huge tensions that has been blocking my voice as an actress. I will definetly continue working with Ben in the future as well.
- Johanna Ruonala, Actor

I really enjoyed our weekend workshop with Ben Joiner. As a classically trained singer I especially enjoyed the exploration of more primal sounds and how releasing a sound - totally uncontrolled - feels like. It was quite liberating and helped me to connect more with my body and my emotions. We also looked at how an open and receiving body looks and feels like in acting. The exercises for releasing the body through movement and awareness without judgement were just what I needed as well. Ben was an inspiring teacher with a very conscious and compassionate way of teaching, and I would definitely recommend his workshop for anyone wanting to explore their voices, or looking for ways to release tension in the body or for just more freedom of expression.
- Emma, Actor & Singer

Ben is a brilliant teacher! He’s a genius at what he does, and was able to create a supporting and safe learning environment by being a teacher as well as ”a peer” at the same time. He listened to the students’ needs and concerns and allowed for any feelings to arise. I would recommend this workshop for everyone and anyone interested in learning about their voice and how to use it well.
- Anna Tavaila, Actor

See more testimonials about Ben here.

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ABOUT LINKLATER VOICE ​WORK
Kristin Linklater is one of the most established masters of vocal coaching for western actor training and her work continues to grow in popularity across the globe. She developed her work alongside the post Stanislavskian ‘method’ acting practitioners in the United States during the 60’s, 70’s. During this time, psychological realism and emotional truth in performance were paramount. This new wave of actors had all but abandoned current voice and movement work which had come from early part of the 20thcentury and was deemed too external.
Kristin offered an approach to working on the voice that embraced the emotion within the human actor being and allowed for this potential to be revealed through the voice. The emphasis of her work is on the removal of the physical and psychological blocks that inhibit the human instrument. It’s objective is a voice that is in direct contact with emotional impulse, shaped by the intellect but not restricted by it.
The method includes a series of stages that take an actor through physical awareness, breathing that is instinctual and responsive to emotional/imaginative stimuli, voice that is in contact with feeling, resonance that reveals rather that disguises emotion…and language that taps into the intrinsic musicality of the spoken word. Imagery and ideas are essential for the audience to receive the story so time is also spent embodying this. If the thoughts of the writer and character don’t become part of the actor’s imagination, we hear a list of facts only.
The method is designed to exist alongside contemporary actor training whose objective is to allow an actor to access a balanced quartet of emotion, intellect, voice, and movement.

“The emphasis of the work is to remove the psychological and physical blocks that inhibit the human vocal instrument. It promotes a voice that “is in direct contact with emotional impulse, shaped by the intellect but not restricted by it.”
- Kristin Linklater
 

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