Last summer during the Hamlet sessions, we had a brief foray into the world of voice, but we have barely touched on it since. But it has been suggested recently that we give some time in our weekly training to exploring the voice, both as it affects specific parts of Hamlet - for example, the bits that are sung - and in the wider sense of developing our skills as vocalists.

I don't have a lot of experience with the spoken voice, but in my private work on the new Hamlet roles I've been learning, I have devoted quite a lot of time recently to those aspects of the trained singing voice which can be applied to speaking. So far, the most significant areas are these:

The sound of our voices makes us as available to the audience and to each other as much as anything else we do. To this extent, we are duty bound to enrich the sound we make and work to develop as wide a spectrum of vocal colour as possible, so that we are not only verse, object and verbing virtuosi but vocal virtuosi too. This is just the same, it seems to me, for the actor as for the singer. As the teacher of Bryn Terfel, one of the world's great baritones and possessor of one of the richest voices anywhere said, it's not that he has more to say than other singers, but that the consequence of the awesome variety of colours in his voice is that the audience get much more from it. Simply then, the better the sound we make, the more everyone else gets.

On a technical level, this vocal richness, for speaker or singer, is derived from a complex function of nerve and muscle which, though based on any human being's physiology, can be refined and improved through training. The fundamentals are simple:

Two bands of sheathed muscle, the vocal cords, vibrate together, causing a squeak, which is amplified by partly enclosed space in the torso, neck and head. In good voice production, there are tendencies which are universal: the voice box, the larynx, is flexible yet stable, relying on the active support of the muscles of the head, neck and torso; the vocal cords, as they vibrate together, produce more intensity the more rapid is their meeting and the sureness of their contact. Vocal cords in slow vibration and with less contact produce a less intense fundamental sound for which no amount of amplification can fully compensate. The primary cause of slow vibration and insufficient contact is that the air pressure from below is too great and the the framework within which the larynx operates, is too flimsy. Literally, the cords are blown apart and the voice is weak, or collapses altogether.

To counteract this, many vocalists develop a way of tightening the cords in order to force them together. This, added to excessive pumping of air from the diaphragm does indeed produce a stronger, more intense sound. But it is not, to my ear, a sound freely produced and furthermore, it exerts a strain on the voice to the extent that, in time, the function of the cords will deteriorate. Incidentally, one often hears actors practising this very tightening in the form of a loudly bellowed "MA! MA!"

What we are looking for, I believe, if such a thing can be put briefly, is: strong, flexible support of the laryngeal structure; an intense but unforced meeting of the cords; the activation of those soundboxes the body has to offer; an economical, unforced supply of air.

In giving a certain amount of detail above, it is to give a more precise idea, rather than just saying "voice work", of the way I intend to approach the task. This raises three important questions before we take it any further. Firstly, some or many of you might, through greater experience than mine, want to challenge some of what I've said, or want to approach the subject in a different way. Secondly, because voice is my field, it may be that I am giving it more prominence than some of you think necessary. Thirdly, I am completely open to the idea that I am not the right person to undertake this and that another member, or an outsider, would be preferable. As it is, I know that some of you are voice coaches in your own right, and it would be mad not to bring your expertise to bear as much as possible. Whatever the general feeling is, I would like to make it clear that if anyone would like to discuss or try out anything to do with singing, I'm only too glad to give time to it, either individually or in a group - that would be my way of giving back to Factory - so don't ever feel you're imposing. To move this on, I suggest that general discussion of this subject could be conducted on the website, while more specific proposals, and indeed, counter-proposals should be advanced through the two-backed beast that is Tim and Alex.