A Voice Is. A Voice Has. A Voice Does. (CB Remix)

Konstantinos Thomaidis
(University of Exeter)

venue: Riverstown Hall
time: 18:00

How does having a voice feel from the inside? 
Which are the stories that shape one’s vocal embodiment?
What happens, then, when a voice narrates itself?
What is the epistemic benefit of thinking of this narrative less as writing one’s story (auto-bio-graph-y)
and more as listening to oneself voicing the story of their voice (auto-bio-phon-y)?
And how often does a voicer get to disseminate this lived knowledge from a joint theoretical and artistic perspective? 
Or, to invite audiences to think about their own voices along the way? 

Embarking, aporetically, from questions such as the above, this practice-research explores the performative potentials of the nascent methodology of autobiophony. The interactive solo weaves together DIY intermedia, scholarly research and physiovocal praxis with subtle dramaturgies of audience participation to think about the cultural intra-actions within which vocality emerges. To mark its 10th-year on tour and development (and its new context), the piece will be presented as a mini ‘CB remix’ of sorts.

Konstantinos Thomaidis is Associate Professor of Voice, Theatre & Performance at the University of Exeter. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies and the Routledge Voice Studies book series as well as founder of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Voice Studies and the ‘Sound, Voice & Music’ Working Group at the Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA). His books include Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience (Routledge 2015, with Ben Macpherson), Theatre & Voice (Bloomsbury 2017) and Voice and Music Training for the Contemporary Actor (National Theatre of Greece, 2024). He has written extensively on voice and identity, vocal praxis and voice dramaturgy. He currently researches and writes about trans voices in performance. As a director and musician, he has created more than 40 performances. Most recently, he wrote the choral songs and co-directed for the music docu-film Mother Company (Greek National Opera/Ferodo Bridges).

https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/25704-konstantinos-thomaidis