The New York Times Arts & Leisure Weekend 2012: Highlights From Philip Glass …
The New York Times Arts Leisure Weekend brought New York City four days of rousing discussion with 15 of the most active cultural figures today. Weve curated the best moments from five of these talks, from Carey Mulligans tales of drama school rejection to the incredibly quotable Simon Doonans theory that gay men are French women, but with penises. Read on for more from Alan Rickman, Glass, Mulligan, Doonan, and the cast of The Good Wife, and hop over here to stream the talks online in full.
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman sat down with New York Times theater reporter Patrick Healy early Saturday morning to discuss acting, his famously distinctive voice, and his role in the new Broadway play Seminar.
- Johanna Barr
Alan, thanks so much for joining us.
Im not awake yet. I dont know that Im actually here.
First theater role?
The very first thing I ever did was at what we call primary school, when I was 7 years old. I played the title role in a play called King Grizzlybeard. I remember my mother cutting a little triangle of fur out of a rug for the beard.
When you started your training at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), how similar was your voice to what we hear now?
What I hear is not what you hear, so I dont even know what youre talking about. Certainly, when I was at drama school it was the source of many complaints, big problems, a great deal of work. A lot of its just to do with the architecture of your mouth, the sound you make, and its about the muscle strength in your tongue, so once it all gets taken apart — you know, I had big problems.
What sorts of problems?
That I had very lazy diction, that I had a spastic soft palate … my voice teacher said, You sound as if your voice is coming out of the back end of a drainpipe. So thats how cruel drama school is. It means, I suppose, basically, that I had to learn to bring it all forward. It was all kind of traveling backward.
