076 Your Voice, Your Art, and You

Our voice is the most intimate part of human expression. It is formed over decades of parenting, socialization, and trauma. Our physical alignment and muscle tension create the speaking pattern that we function from day to day. If you want to be a transformational actor, then you need extensive and disciplined work to unlock the way you speak. This week Charlie talks to Midori Nakamura, a designated Linklater teacher who runs the Voice & Speech program at the Maggie Flanigan Studio. Charlie and Midori discuss the bravery and dedication required when taking the journey to free the human voice. You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by  https://www.thelawrencetrailer.com. For written transcripts, to leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan:

Now, I've said to you many times, I say it to my students. If you want to be a serious actor, if you want to be a first-rate artist, you need to master your instrument. And that doesn't mean just training yourself as an actor learning how to act that's important. You need to develop your body so that it's pliable and capable of processing rich emotion, free of tension and you need to develop your voice. The most intimate part of how we express ourselves to the world and that voice has been developed and formed over years of trauma, parenting, socialization, education, and that needs to be unpacked, opened up, so that you can develop range, size, resonance, clarity. That's what will make you transformational as an actor. So today, we talk to Midori Nakamura, she is my voice and speech teacher at the Maggie Flanigan Studio. She is an incredible artist, a first-rate teacher, and we're going to talk about the human voice as it pertains to you as a professional actor. So put the phone back in your pocket, Creating Behavior starts now

Speaker 2:

(Theme Music)

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, hello my fellow daydreamers, happy 2023. I hope you had a good holiday season. I always think that the New Year is a good time to reset, recalibrate, it's like a little mini-rebirth. So I hope that 2023 brings you all of the success that you wished for and are working and busting your ass to achieve. So let's talk about the human voice. A couple of weeks ago, I had Sara Fay George on, it was my movement teacher at the Maggie Flanigan Studio. And today, we get a really fantastic conversation with Midori Nakamura who is a designated Linklater. And if you don't know who Kristin Linklater is, you should. And if you can find a way to train in her method of freeing the natural voice, it will not only rock your world, it will change who are you and it will transform the quality of your acting.

That voice that you have today is the product of decades of parenting, socialization, education, of the trauma that you have experienced in your life. It is influenced certainly by the misogyny, the sexism, the racism, the chauvinism that has been shoved at you since you were a kid. But that voice cannot be where all of your work as an actor comes from. That's not transformational. And that takes work. And Kristin Linklater is considered one of the greatest voice and speech teachers that has ever lived. And she just recently passed away a few years ago. But the progression of her work is, I think, an essential part of training yourself as an actor. And so we're going to talk to Midori who has really dedicated her life, not just to acting in her professional career, but also to teaching and mastering this work.

It's very rare when you find a teacher who considers teaching to be an art form. Most teachers don't think that way. Most teachers are just pulling out notes from class that they took a few years ago. They're doing it to kill time between jobs. But not the really goods ones and Midori is a great one. And her career is rather fascinating. She has worked with some incredible people, like when she trained with Grotowski. And if you don't know who he is, look him up. She's worked Andre Gregory. And her life growing up in Montana as a Japanese American, fascinating, how she got to New York and her views on beauty and the complexity of the human voice is fascinating. I learned a hell of a lot talking to her. So let's just get right to it, shall we? At the top of our conversation, I asked Midori what she found fascinating about the human voice. And that's how we kick things off. Here is Midori.

Midori Nakamura:

Well, I think I didn't connect with my own voice for a long, long time. And I actually will directly connect that to racism. And my own experience growing up of a type of oppression. So for years, I had no voice. I mean, almost literally I had no voice. My voice was tiny and inaudible. I realized something was missing. In the first part of my work, I really focused on the body because of that, because the body was responsive, my voice was not. And then of course, I met Kristin and that then began the long work of finding my own voice. And here's the thing, Kristin used to always say, "Your voice is you," and I always thought, "Well, that's a very pretty metaphor," but it's actually not a metaphor. She used to say, "Anything that happens to you happens to your voice. Anything that happens to your voice, happens to you, any changes, any shifts, any growth happens to you."

And because of that connection, anything that happens to your voice also changes your art, and deepens your art, and grows your art. Because it's a triad, it's one thing, your voice, your art and you, right? And that's a piece that cannot be missing. That's what is so amazing and surprising to me about the voice is when I stepped into a classroom and I'll ask somebody a question, and suddenly their voice will be different than I've ever heard it. And sometimes it's because of what is happened in my class, but sometimes it's because of what happened in your class.

Charlie Sandlan:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Midori Nakamura:

And yet, I can hear a change. And sometimes it's not anything that we worked on in class. So something happened to them that shifted their inner self, and through that, their voice shifted. Something opened up. Now, again, something opens up, I had one student asked me, "What's the difference between an emotional opening and a physical opening?" And I said, "Why do you think they're different? Why do you think they're separate?" It's one thing, right? And that's what really interests me, it's this component that's essential, I think, to being fully human, to being a better artist and to give shape to the ineffable, right? What is it that we can't see, we can't touch, but it's moving in us? It's-

Charlie Sandlan:

Ineffable, that's a great word.

Midori Nakamura:

I think about it all the time. I also think about numinous, right? Which is something greater than us, but still, it's within us as well. And I think acting very much has to do with that. Which is why, I think, I'm drawn to acting from the very beginning, because it has to do with those thing both within and without that are bigger than us that you can't see, you can't touch. Some people would call them fantasy. I call them another reality. And the voice can give shape to all of that in a way that even the body cannot.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, how did you discover Kristin Linklater?

Midori Nakamura:

Huh. Well, that's a weird story. A simple, short version. I was working with a man named Jerzy Grotowski, who also developed a whole line of physical work. And through Jerzy, I met Andre Gregory, and Andre Gregory-

Charlie Sandlan:

You're dropping some serious names-

Midori Nakamura:

Well, it is.

Charlie Sandlan:

... these are forces-

Midori Nakamura:

I'm probably one of the last people on earth who actually had the experience of working with all these people who are now most of them are dead. But yeah, Andre brought me. Actually, they were also very much believers in the ineffable, the mystical, right? And they did a lot of serious work on their own as well. Andrew took me aside and said to me, "The next stage of your work is going to be working with this woman that I know." And a very, very, very young me said, "Yeah. Okay. Sure. Great. Great. Fine," right? And I went to that month-long workshop, which was a month-long... It was under the auspices of Shakespeare & Company. Where both Tina Packer and Kristin Linklater were working at that time. And it was all about voice work and Shakespeare. And I spent a month there. And it was marvelous. That's also where I met my dearest friend Karen Allen who showed up because she had finished doing a lot of back-to-back films and she was feeling a little bit lost.

And she was working with Kristin, because she lost her voice doing extremities on Broadway. That's how she met Kristin and Kristin gave her her voice back, literally. She was losing her voice, right? So then Kristin was like, "Why don't you come to this workshop?" She was feeling lost. And she came. And we ended up working together. And then shortly thereafter, we did a production of As You Like It at Shakespeare & Company. And she played Rosalind and I played Celia. And it was just the most remarkable, I mean, that was my beginning which then became quite extensive of performing Shakespeare, which had been in my mind before then. Because I don't know, it just seems so inaccessible. I thought I would never be able to play most of the literature. Because most of the literature is written by white men for white people. So it's only recently that that world has wholly started to open up. Growing up, I never could picture how that work. Actors were still very much nailed down to, if it's a family, they've all got to look the same, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Right.

Midori Nakamura:

If it's a brother and sister, they've got to look the same, otherwise it's not real. So most of the literature in my mind, I mean, I didn't know what I was going to be able to play, except for outsiders, strange people, people that are unconnected in someway, right? And that would include American Classic Literature, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, there's Death of a Salesman on Broadway with a Black family at it's center, it works beautifully. It's neither color blind nor exclusionary. It's a new world in acting that's opening up. Which is it's finally, thank God, it's coming. For Shakespeare I thought, "How on earth am I going to? Is anybody going to accept me as somebody who is an Elizabethan?" Right? In that world. Speaking those words. And one of the gifts of Kristin and Tina was that they're like, "Why not?" Now, it is true that I did play a lot of spirits, nonhuman people. That's true, right? But I also played human people. And so that sort of opened up a whole journey for me. In terms of thinking, "What is possible? What can I do?"

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, how did you work your way from thinking, "I'm an actor, I'm an actor," to, "Well, maybe I'm a teacher and I have something that I can offer?"

Midori Nakamura:

That took a long time. I felt I think initially, you know this horrible expression, Charlie? Those who can do those who can't teach?

Charlie Sandlan:

Of course. Absolutely.

Midori Nakamura:

It's like I think I sort of believe that for a long time.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, I did too.

Midori Nakamura:

And I don't think it was until I really took a look around and realized, "I have done a lot. I have a substantial body of work. I have grown my art and my technique to the point where I'm confident about it. I know it's there. I have much less of the horrible feeling of insecurity or not being good enough that I used to feel as a younger person all the time." Now, of course, it's still there but it's much, much fainter in the background and it's not all the time. So as soon as I knew in myself, in myself that I had accomplished a lot, I had my tools as an actor, I knew what to do, then I was like, "Huh. Maybe now I can also give back." There's partly this sense, because teaching doesn't really pay the best.

Charlie Sandlan:

No, it doesn't.

Midori Nakamura:

But it is this sense of giving back that also gives to you in this that I've discovered. So if I can give back to the art form, and then from the students get back all of the joy an energy that they find when they start to realize they're much more than they thought they were. That fuels my energy and my art in a way that I didn't know is possible.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, it's very rewarding. It's very fulfilling to take a group of people that come to you knowing nothing.

Midori Nakamura:

Knowing nothing.

Charlie Sandlan:

And shutdown through all of their trauma, and their parenting, and their socialization, and racism, and the sexism, misogyny and get them to find who they are, get them to step into the fullness of themselves as people, as artists, it's very fulfilling.

Midori Nakamura:

It's liberating for them, it's also liberating for us, right? Because each time, it's different. So sometimes I think of it, each time that we walk into class, if we're really trying to do, if we're really trying to be artists, we have to be really present with every ounce of our being. And that is a practice which we should all be living in as artists. Whether you're an actor, a teacher, a director, a painter, a musician, to be really present in the world is what we should be trying to do as much as possible. And the classroom actually gives us a place to practice that. And so I find it very rewarding in that respect, that I walk out energized, that I'm alive, that I'm more in touch with myself if I am open and empathetic with other people.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, all right. So let's talk about that classroom. How would you describe what Kristin Linklater created? I mean, what is that freeing of the human voice?

Midori Nakamura:

Kristin would have a very precise definition for you, because that was who she was. I would say, for me, yes, there's a very precise structure that we follow that has been developed in doing that work, but also I would say it's mystery. That is, there's a structure, there are exercises, there's a sequence, there's a progression that we follow over and over. There's a lot of repetition, but within that structure, it's different every time. It depends on the person who comes to you and how, and where they're at, and what you're dealing with in that inner life, right? So it's different every time. You can't say it's going to be this, and then this will happen, and then this will happen, it's always surprising.

Charlie Sandlan:

So what is the goal if someone comes to you and says, "Okay. I'm going to spend the next two years of my life with you?"

Midori Nakamura:

We free the voice. We free the voice of some of the blocks that society has put on it. We free the voice of some of the blocks that family has put on it. We open up resonance. We free the body. We check the alignment, right? To make sure all of these things are part of the structure that supports freedom, let's call it. But in freeing the voice, the bigger thing is to free the human. Free the humanity.

Charlie Sandlan:

Freeing the human. That is a big thing to say. It also seems rather daunting and terrifying.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. You don't think about it that way. There's so much hard work involved and so much repetition. I tell students, "I, myself, I did voice one numerable times over, and over, and over." It's just like anything else. You work on the details and you repeat, and you repeat, and you repeat, and the repetition brings it into your body.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, so what does it mean to you to free the human?

Midori Nakamura:

It's never a goal that you attain. And I say to them straight out, "You'll never get there. You'll never come to the end of this." If this-

Charlie Sandlan:

This is the goal, you'll never going to reach out, but let's go.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. Because it's all a process of evolution, right? I mean, I think that's what I'm interested in. If we get caught up into like, "I must achieve this or this is my goal," your artists is going to shrivel and die. Those are the people who are like, "Oh, I need to make this much money a year as an actor. I need to be a star." 99.9% of people will never have that. And even those who do are never satisfied, right? So for us to keep going as artists, you have to focus on the process. You can't focus on some idea that you have of where you're going to get to.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's also amazing to me that most actors don't spend any time doing this kind of work on themselves.

Midori Nakamura:

It's something that troubles me with American actors, largely. Because, I don't know, there is this belief that they need a lot of technique somehow. They can just be themselves, right? Whatever that means.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. Conversational reality. Well, conversational reality, that's all you need to be an actor.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. And then you look at all of these wonderful actors coming out of Britain and they are so well-trained. They walk in and they take the parts, because they've had years, years of technique, years of voice, years of accents and dialects, years of physical training. I mean, they can really do anything.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's right. Impeccable voices speech, they're great with language, it's resonant, it's clear, they're incredible with dialects.

Midori Nakamura:

And they can transform.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes.

Midori Nakamura:

And the problem with being caught in your personal casual reality is that there's not a lot of room there. There's not a lot of characters or range there, how can you really transform into the way that some parts ask you to do?

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, is there something when you get a group of, let's say, 14, 16 people together that is a common thread that everyone is collectively deals with when they come to this work?

Midori Nakamura:

Well, so the two beginning things that really... Man, I feel like you need to work on this for years too. But the two things that we start by taking a look at. The first is the alignment of the skeleton, because so many of us are on screens all the time in this day and age. So the head pokes for it, and the neck becomes strained and tight. Shoulders, too. And so-

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. And I see actors worked their head. It's actually a hit of their body.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. And that's also, it's connected to a form of pushing when they feel that their being is not enough in someway, right? Not enough power, not enough force, not enough action. And then somehow the head takes over. And the head starts is pushing forward. And right there, you have a really big disconnect, that's a big problem for the actor, because it takes you out of your body, it disconnects you from your breath, which is everything, and it cuts you off from your lower impulses. So as soon as I somebody's head move forward, I know that we've got a problem on our hands.

Charlie Sandlan:

What do you mean by lower impulses?

Midori Nakamura:

All of the things in the gut. The visceral, instinctive, animal drive. The things that our society really doesn't like to get in contact with that much, because we're puritanical, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

100%, yeah.

Midori Nakamura:

The animal drives, need, lust, hunger, which drives so many characters, how are you going to play somebody like Edmund or Macbeth if you can't get in touch with those lower impulses?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. I don't know. You also teach in the academic world, which has its own constraints, and I've talked to a lot of teachers in the university system in the last few years and see that's just not something that they do in that work is champion getting down in the dirt, and the grit, and the ugliness, and the baser impulses. It's like, lets coddle, let's sanitize, let's have our trigger warnings, and sit down if you're uncomfortable.

Midori Nakamura:

Yes. Along those lines, latest research has shown that trigger warnings don't work. In fact, they make the situation worst, latest research. Honestly, trigger warnings came out of academia in this idea in the classroom that this would be a helpful tool, and the students of course immediately latched on to that, and now some of them insist on it, right? I told them right upfront that I prefer not to work with those, that I will if you will it's absolutely necessary, but I had another colleague who said to me, "All of theater is a trigger warning. All of Shakespeare is a trigger warning."

Charlie Sandlan:

Right. Yes.

Midori Nakamura:

Right? What are you going to do if you take the teeth out of it like that? And I will say, it does depend on the institution and it does depend on the individual teachers who are in that institution, for example, yes, across most America I would say, "You're right, there is this idea of caution," right? We can't get too messy. On the other hand, I mean, when I see in the faculty at Yale, now that is an exceptional institution, they are not avoiding this. They are trying to find the way to move forward getting in the messiness of it all without harming anybody. That's the question for me. Can we get into the messiness? Can we get into the chaos? Can we get into the terror but not harm or humiliate anyone?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. I think it's completely possible.

Midori Nakamura:

I do too. That's how I want to work. And what it means is that everybody makes mistakes sometimes, I'm going to make mistakes, and hopefully I will recognize or be called on that, and hopefully when I made mistake I will then backtrack and say, "I am so sorry. I'm going to try to be better." And then I will find another way. But do you see, if we insist on the messiness, the chaos, then we can't always be right, and there's a huge obligation on teachers always to be right and we're human, too.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. I mean, we're doing the best, hopefully you're doing the best you can and that you got to be able to push and challenge, but you also have to be able to be supportive and-

Midori Nakamura:

And listen.

Charlie Sandlan:

Listen. And it's never personal. I don't know, when you and I, we trained in a different period where there is a lot of cruelty in teaching.

Midori Nakamura:

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Charlie Sandlan:

And that was just a way it was, because that's how they were trained, and then it gets passed down. And, I mean, cruelty in the sense that you could get teachers, and it can really fuck somebody out.

Midori Nakamura:

Well, there was a lot of personal attacking, insults, comments about your character. And also, with an attitude of how wrong you are as a human being. It was also the tone in which it was delivered that could just make you feel like nothing, right? Really make you feel like so small. I think it's still possible to convey all that information without the whip. And I think it's still possible to insist on the highest standards without making someone else feel so bad about themselves.

Charlie Sandlan:

Correct.

Midori Nakamura:

Sometimes-

Charlie Sandlan:

Actually, I find... Go ahead.

Midori Nakamura:

... it's uncomfortable. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. That's different. It's different than doing harm, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes.

Midori Nakamura:

When you ask somebody to take a look at themselves, to take the good, hard look at themselves and they're defenses that they've built up, which is different than their personality or their character or their humanity. But the defenses that they have built up for... And I always say for very good reason, you had to survive, but now we just have to ask if these can be dismantled, right? These defenses, the blocks that you've built up to protect yourself. And so if we do that with a type of empathy as supposed to just say like, "No. That sucks." Then we can make progress.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, what are those blocks when you say all these blocks that you've built up over decades and rightly so.

Midori Nakamura:

Well-

Charlie Sandlan:

How do they manifest themselves if someone wants to be an actor?

Midori Nakamura:

How do they manifest?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes.

Midori Nakamura:

How do they manifest? First of all, somebody comes in with a ton of blocks or defenses is going to have a very almost no voice. The first time they speak, you almost can't hear them, it's so far back in their throat or so high-pitched and nasal that you can't understand them almost or they sounded if they're choking. That's a lot of blocks. Their bodies are usually so knotted in tension that they don't stand upright almost, literally. And they are incredibly emotionally repressed. That is I have spoken with beginning students who will actually be aware like, "I want to feel something, but I don't."

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. They ache for that.

Midori Nakamura:

Well, we all do because that's part of our humanity.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah.

Midori Nakamura:

We're designed that way. We're supposed to feel a lot every day, a lot every day, every moment. We're supposed to feel. We're built that way. And so it's really painful to see somebody walking to the room who is that person is dying for his or her humanity and to be manifest and to have that in communication with others. And to see somebody walking who is that repressed, that's where our work starts.

Charlie Sandlan:

What's fascinating to me is there are a lot of students that come to train, that are exactly in that spot that you're talking about. And what do you think it is that draws them to want to be actors, which is so far removed from what they're capable of, right? When they start, but yet, that's what they want to do.

Midori Nakamura:

I know. I think that they understand that there's a couple of things that go on, one of them is the true impulse, and one of the false impulse, in my mind. The false impulse, well there's a couple of false impulses. The first false impulse is to want to be famous, and beautiful, and adored. That's the first false impulse. And if somebody comes in like that, I'd say, "You're here for the wrong reasons." The second false impulse is to escape from whatever in their life they don't like, has been scary or hard for them, and they see acting as a way to get out of their own lives, their own bodies, their own personalities, that's another false impulse. And when I see a student like that who says that, I say, "Well, that's not acting. That's not acting." But the true-

Charlie Sandlan:

Actually, certainly not an escape. It's certainly not an escape.

Midori Nakamura:

No. No. The true impulse is, "I want that freedom. I want to live. I want to be. I want to transform." Those are all true impulses. I can help with that.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. And you can see very quickly the students that have spent their life apologizing, spent their life being peacemakers, spent their life being told that they can't get angry, it's unattractive, don't be a bitch.

Midori Nakamura:

Oh, yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

You'll never get a man. Certainly, people of color who have to handle and suppress their anger.

Midori Nakamura:

Yup. Anger is a big one for people of color, because it's dangerous. Literally, it's dangerous.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. Like you're going to get shot, arrested, you name it.

Midori Nakamura:

And it's still going, right? So I have to be very careful. I have found particularly with my young male Black students, because just something is simple as standing still and closing their eyes is terribly scary, because they could die in the outside world if they do that, literally. Standing still and closing their eyes, right? It's a huge challenge for them. And then other people of course have so much trauma wrapped around their voice, because they've been told in very many ways, "Shut up."

Charlie Sandlan:

Yup.

Midori Nakamura:

Or, "Your voice doesn't matter." To unwrap that is really actually painful for them, but the brave ones, the courageous ones are going to move through that and it will feel painful, but they will know that there is the light at the end of the tunnel where they can be freer, they can be themselves.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, I'm curious when I think this is happened over the last, maybe, 10 years. The number of transgendered and people that are training and pursuing their career and stepping into the fullness of who they are, I'm wondering if there's anything interesting that you're finding working with transgender people who talked about a voice change and a voice that's being really, I don't know, produced also by whatever medicine they're taking, whatever hormones they need to take in order to drop a voice in.

Midori Nakamura:

So this is a really an interesting frontier of the work that there is a Linklater community and we are very much in discussion about all these things. The new things that are opening up, both for students of color and for transgender students, and of course all the other, the BIPOC community, intimacy issues, I mean, we are all in conversation about all of that. I have three transgenders students right now, and it's been a remarkable journey with them, because I see them becoming more and more themselves, that there's a huge sort of sense of letting go that has to happen, of letting go of an old identity that has been fashioned for them by society, maybe their parents, maybe other people, but there is this whole letting... A release of that old identity has to happen. And that often comes with pain, and fear, and turmoil, that has to gently let go as gently as possible, anyway. But then when they step into a new sense of themselves, which feels more true to them, right?

More true. More true. This is who I am. It's incredible to watch. There's such a sense of new power and joy that comes, right? An ownership, let's say, that they didn't have before. An ownership of themselves. That's what we all looked for and navigating it so interesting, like I was working with one of my transgender students on a play, it was a physical theater, I was asking her to do a lot of very strong action and activity, at one point, she came to me and said, "I can't do this, because my muscle tone is shifting, I just saw my doctor and he said maybe don't try to do those things that your old body did, because your new body is not going to be able to handle that at this point." And I said, "Absolutely. Let's change it. Let's figure out another way." And so that sort of communication has to happen because everything is changing for them, right? So you may start out one week and this is going to be easy for you, physically.

By the end of the week, it's something that has to also shift, because the new body can't do that or is uncomfortable doing that or will hurt itself doing that. So we have to be in constant communication about that. Now, the other interesting thing is, of course, that the voice was shift, right? Now, what we're doing a lot is reframing Kristin's whole idea that of what is the natural voice. And it's not necessarily the voice that you were born with. Which Kristin was very much set on that idea. That the baby that you were is completely free and that's sort of idyllic place to return to. We're reframing to say, "Well, yes, there's a lot of things to be learned regarding a baby, the freedom of breath, the immediate impulse, the emotional fluidity, there's a lot of things to be learned by looking at a baby, but we are not babies. We're adults. And we're experience has also shaped us and made us who we are. And for some people that means, "This body that I was born into is not my true myself. It's something else."

Charlie Sandlan:

That's deep.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. And it's an entirely new paradigm which shatters a lot of old sentimental ideas, the return to Eden, being a baby again, the freedom of innocence, which I think is great because we're not babies and who are as artists, actors, teachers is all determined by our life experience. So we can't throw that away.

Charlie Sandlan:

No, you can't throw it away. And I don't know if this because young people now are feeling more empowered to talk and stand up and address their experiences, but the number of people in our classroom that have suffered some severe trauma, the majority of the women that I teach have suffered sexual trauma, sexual assault, it comes up in their work, if they're trying to navigate it, I mean, I don't know if you noticed that or how that in the last couple of years.

Midori Nakamura:

Well, I mean, I say I agree. I think there's a couple of things going on there. I think first of all, that we live in a very traumatic world. I mean, look at it, right? We live in a very traumatic world, right now. That will probably only continue with all the crisis that are arising. So that's the first thing. It's a very dangerous world that we live in right now. And with global warming, it's just going to get worse. In someways, the trauma has been there all along, it's just that people are becoming more aware of it. The intimacy coordinator that I worked with was like, "It's been there all along. It's just that nobody talked about it.

It wasn't recognized, but now it's being recognized because somebody in power has fallen." The structure is scared, the structure says, "Oh, if Harvey can go down, I could go down." So now they're scrambling to try to like... It's a form actually protection, but it is also going to ultimately protect the victims. Racism has been there all along. Question has been there all along. It's just that the structure didn't admit to it, see it or allow for those voices to be heard.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, it's interesting. You said when we first started talking, the voice that you came to your art with was a product of oppression and racism. So what did you mean by that? How did that play out?

Midori Nakamura:

Well, I mean, it's so funny. I had student who was from Utah, Hispanic, and a former Mormon. And-

Charlie Sandlan:

That's a triple-whammy right there.

Midori Nakamura:

Yup. Yup. And I started laughing and I looked at him and I said, "Well, I grew up in Montana, so I know exactly how fucked up you are."

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah.

Midori Nakamura:

And we both laughed, because we did know, right? I think my family at that time was the only nonwhite family in the entire town that I grew up in. Our family was the only nonwhite family in all of the schools that I went to. From grade school-

Charlie Sandlan:

How did you guys end up in Montana?

Midori Nakamura:

My father was offered a job at the university. He was a microbiologist. In that generation of Japanese Americans, there was still the really old desire to own land . The idea that you had to own land in order to have security and success. And Montana, of course, was a place where you could buy a piece of land and it wasn't expensive, even us, we could do that, right? So he took that position there with the idea of establishing some sort of estate or something. And my mother who was, for the first part of her life, a very good and dutiful Japanese American wife followed him. Well, what he wanted, that was the priority.

Charlie Sandlan:

That was it, right?

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. And so that's how they ended up there. Now, when I run into another Montanan, as I do strangely, I always think like, "What are the chances? There's more cows than people in Montana."

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, did you always have an artistic sensibility? I mean, that'd be to grow up with a microbiologist as a father, it was- that must have been very difficult.

Midori Nakamura:

I always was very interested in my imagination and a very strong imagination. Because the outside world was so unfriendly to me, I retreated inside. So I had a really hyperactive imagination and fantasy life when I was a kid. It was all on the inside, it was all on the inside. And I think that sort of what drew me toward the art, right? Just the inner life. The inner life. And also, I grew up out in the country surrounded by nature, I mean, real country, with nobody around, and I think that also sort of drew me towards something that was not ordinary human society. Do you know what I mean? So I think there was no way I could ever have become an accountant or a banker.

Charlie Sandlan:

Solitude. Lots of solitude, it sounds like.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. And, I mean, as you know, we really sort of need that inside life. I mean, that I think is what leads us to being actors, is the inner life, the intuition, the impulses that we sense moving in us that nobody else sees.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's private stuff.

Midori Nakamura:

It's all very private. And then what we do in our work is in someway manifest it. Bring it out. Let it be born into the outside world with safety and with care. But I think that's what creating a work, creating a character, that's what it is, right? How do we shape that? It comes from all this inner stuff that's moving in us. And out of that, we bring forth all of this unexpected stuff, right? The stuff that you don't know is in you, right? But you sense it.

Charlie Sandlan:

It sounds like you don't know. That's right.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

The stuff that you don't even know is sitting there, waiting to come out.

Midori Nakamura:

So that's where I think it's so interesting because I really do think that the Meisner work does that very well. In terms of hooking into impulse and working off of your partner, that it doesn't become a predictable certain path forward. It's spontaneous, it's unexpected. And again, and again I have students say, "I had no idea that this was going to happen, but it did."

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. I mean, they do things, they work from parts of their selves that they didn't even know were accessible to them.

Midori Nakamura:

Yes.

Charlie Sandlan:

Meisner's work really does tap beyond into the primitive unconscious and it- it really does.

Midori Nakamura:

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Charlie Sandlan:

... technique really does-

Midori Nakamura:

Yes.

Charlie Sandlan:

... and it cracks you open.

Midori Nakamura:

For me, it's the most interesting path into acting, right? Because you know what, it involves bigger things than just acting in someways. It really does. When we talk about the primitive unconscious, we're also talking about the ineffable, the numinous. Things that are larger than what we think we are, that somehow we can channel, so all of that makes the technique really interesting for me, one of the ways to get into that space out of which great work it's created. I do tell my students, "Just remember so this event or this experience never expect it to happen again. Next time it will be different. Don't try to repeat it and set it exactly in stone. It will keep flowing, but it will take a different form each time, just as each performance is different, even if the blocking and the text are the same. Each time, it has to be new, it's own thing."

Charlie Sandlan:

That's right. Well, what happens is those students, actors, right? You have a really wonderful experience and you want to try to recreate that and then you start-

Midori Nakamura:

Of course.

Charlie Sandlan:

... and you start working for a resolve and try to force something out of you that might not be right.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. And the spirit will retreat with pushing. The more you push, the more... Man, I'm just going to call it this, because I just came out of a workshop where it was called this, the more you push, the more your soul will retreat. So that's not the way in.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's an incredible sentence. What do you mean by that, the spirit will retreat?

Midori Nakamura:

Because it can't be forced. One of my teachers used to say this amazing thing that I carry forward into my classes, which is, "For the soul to be revealed, that is a beautiful thing that helps the world," right? "For the soul to be stripped naked before its time, that is a travesty."

Charlie Sandlan:

To be stripped naked before it's time.

Midori Nakamura:

Right. And that's not just dependent on outside people, other people, that's how we handle ourselves, do you see? That's how we handle ourselves. If I try to force my instrument into a place as supposed to just opening the door and allowing, if I try to force my soul into that, then nothing will happen. It will be bad. It will be a crime against myself. And the self will retreat further.

Charlie Sandlan:

I mean, that is such a high-end thing to consider artistically and incredibly difficult to do.

Midori Nakamura:

Well, it's our life's work.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's right.

Midori Nakamura:

It's our life's work. And that's why it's never finished. Tension always has a way of coming back. So you have to keep on working to release.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes. But I also find that most actors, they take class, they train, they do their work, but yet, they don't carry that into their day-to-day habitual habits of-

Midori Nakamura:

Okay.

Charlie Sandlan:

... "I'm doing it. I'm going to warm myself up for 15, 20 minutes every morning."

Midori Nakamura:

That's right.

Charlie Sandlan:

I mean, they just work, they train, and then it all dies on them.

Midori Nakamura:

That's right. We can do nothing about that. That becomes the responsibility of the actor. And by the actor, I'm meaning that both in the artistic sense, but also in a person moving through the world to carry it forward, to make it part of their life, to practice, just to practice. The practice.

Charlie Sandlan:

The practice. The practice of it. Mm-hmm. How much time do you think an actor should be working on their voice a day?

Midori Nakamura:

Well, it depends on where they are in the process, I would say. If you're at the beginning stage, I would say, "You should be doing a full warmup every day. That's 45 minutes minimum every day. If you're at the beginning stage of your work." This is going to sounds horrible, but if you've had like three years of voice work, then maybe you can pull it down to half an hour or 20 minutes. What I did do recently for one of my second year classes, they were asking, "Well, how do we condense this?" And in five minutes, I went through all of the exercises, right? And I said-

Charlie Sandlan:

Wow.

Midori Nakamura:

... "So there, I just did that," right? But I've been having this for decades, so it's different, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Mm-hmm.

Midori Nakamura:

And I said, "You have to also look at yourself and feel yourself where do you feel What needs to wake up in you. And where are you tight? What's needs to be released? You decide. My body needs this. My voice needs this. And that's what you open up before you go to work."

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. Because I tell my students, "I cannot work on your voice. I am not going to work on your body. You're going to have to do that somewhere else. All I can tell you is, I can't understand a fucking thing you're saying, it sounds like you got ten marbles in your mouth. And I'm five feet away from you."

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

"I can't understand you and I can't hear you, so you're going to have to fix this."

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah.

Charlie Sandlan:

But muddled speech, I say, an audience will forgive a lot, they will not forgive you if they cannot understand what you're saying.

Midori Nakamura:

That's right.

Charlie Sandlan:

It's going to kill you. It will kill your career.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. Yeah. And there is a really bad trend right now in the business that has to do mumbling. And there's conversation that I have been in, even including sound engineers on films, and they have a problem with it too, because even editing and with all of their equipment, they can't make it comprehensible.

Charlie Sandlan:

You see, when you're watching stuff, how many times that we watch things you go, "I have to rewind it 15 seconds because I can't understand you."

Midori Nakamura:

Right.

Charlie Sandlan:

I don't understand it.

Midori Nakamura:

It's a trend. I can't think that it will continue. It's a trend right now that steps in for a real strong internal connection. It seems to be more real or truthful in someways for a young actor, especially to mumble, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes, like the James Dean, Marlon Brando school of just like, "Let's just mumble," and-

Midori Nakamura:

Right. Then becomes the whole question as like, "Why do you have words at all then?" There is still an audience-actor relationship there. I mean, if what you do is completely incomprehensible, why are there words at all? Why is there a text at all? Why is there a screenplay," right? Why don't you just make sounds? So I think it's possible again to have both, a sense of intimacy an almost privacy, but also, to be understood. It's possible to have both, but I think you need technique to do that.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yes. And then you have actors that they just whisper, that's how they solve-

Midori Nakamura:

Oh, my God.

Charlie Sandlan:

... their acting. It's just whispering.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. Whispering and vocal fry are two, again, two trends that people feel sometimes give them authenticity, when in fact, it's type of almost hiding and a defense that steps in for a lack of technique.

Charlie Sandlan:

What is vocal fry for those that don't understand what that is?

Midori Nakamura:

It's a lower part of range and it pushes this down right here.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah, exactly.

Midori Nakamura:

It's down right here. It's a little bit raveling. All of these ways of using voice are completely valid and could be used for a very specific character effectively.

Charlie Sandlan:

If it's a choice.

Midori Nakamura:

If it's a choice.

Charlie Sandlan:

If it's a choice.

Midori Nakamura:

If it's a conscious choice.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah.

Midori Nakamura:

If it's a conscious choice and not a habit. Then it can be used.

Charlie Sandlan:

That's the key. That's it.

Midori Nakamura:

But you have to be able to do other things as well. Otherwise, you're trapped in that very narrow sphere. Whatever that is.

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah, that's right.

Midori Nakamura:

And you'll never play some of the great theatrical works that require-

Charlie Sandlan:

No.

Midori Nakamura:

... more openness and more vocal presence, and that have to be reach through a very large house.

Charlie Sandlan:

Do you have any opinion of actors that come to you and say, "Well, no, I'm not interested in stage. I just wanted to do film and TV. I'm going to do that."

Midori Nakamura:

Well, one of my teachers says, and I believe this now, one of my teachers says, "Great actors should do both always. You should always be working on theatrical text, you should always be working doing on-camera work." They stretch in two different ways. So to be-

Charlie Sandlan:

Why is that important?

Midori Nakamura:

The best actor you can be is the one that can most transform, has the most range, has the most choice, options, right? Conscious choice in creating a character or finding your way through a scene. So with the more options you have, the more you can expand into your possibility.

Charlie Sandlan:

I love that. That makes perfect sense to me. And I could talk to you for another hour, but I'm going to get you out. I'm going to fade the music up here. First, I just wanted to say to you, because you've been teaching at a studio now for a couple of years, you're an incredible teacher, and the number of students and by number, I mean all of them say, "How profoundly you impact them. That you are a formidable presence. That you are fierce, yet kind and supportive, and emphatic, yet you don't let anybody get away with anything. And you're just an incredible teacher. And I feel very lucky to have you with the studio. You're special. Very special with what you do."

Midori Nakamura:

Well, thanks so much, Charlie. I feel the same way about the studio as a whole, right?

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah.

Midori Nakamura:

So I think-

Charlie Sandlan:

Yeah. It's a special place.

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah, it is. Thanks so much.

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, you're welcome. So now, I'm going to fade the music up here. But do you have anything, any advice that you'd like to offer to anybody that wants to pursue an acting career ?

Midori Nakamura:

Yeah. What I say always at the end is, "Don't stop. Keep going."

Speaker 2:

(Theme music fading up.)

Charlie Sandlan:

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking and keeping your phone in your pocket. Please subscribe, follow this show, we're happy to get your podcast. If you have a few moments, please go to iTunes, write a written review for this show, I would love that. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com and go to the contact page, hit that red button. Now, you speak pipe, leave me a voice message, ask me a question, share with me some of your thoughts. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com if you are interested in training with me in New York City. You could also follow me on Instagram, at @creatingbehavior, @maggieflaniganstudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the music my man. You guys, always search for the ineffable, don't stop, play full out with yourself and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan, peace.

Speaker 2:

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