Voice Acting: The ‘Mature Voice’ Has A Richer Bank Account Of Knowledge And Experience, by Elaine Singer

VOICE ACTING
The ‘Mature Voice’ Has A Richer Bank
Account Of Knowledge And Experience
January 20, 2015

By Elaine Singer
Voice Actor

When I was in my 40s my hairdresser announced he had found a few
gray hairs and then immediately reassured me that he could take care of
it.

I warned him that if he dared touch one gray hair on my head he
would lose his fingers. After all, I earned every one of them. Why would
I want to disguise them?

“They’re not gray hairs. They’re wisdom highlights.”
– Author Unknown

Well, now I’m older than 40 and have quite a few more gray hairs and
I’m fine with that.

But what I’m not particularly fine with are the
assumptions associated with aging.
I am a voice actor with what is known as a ‘mature’ voice.

MATURE AT 30?

I have to
admit I do get a bit of a chuckle when I see a script asking for a
‘mature’ voice, around 30 years old. No wonder when you get a script
asking for a 60 year old they are expecting a frail, breaking voice.

Now,
I’m not going to argue with the producer or director; but have you
talked to your grandmother or older neighbor recently? (If you haven’t
you should, you don’t know what you’re missing.)

I am particularly
bemused when they give the age I am supposed to be portraying as my
actual age or younger and expect this type of sound. But I don’t talk
like that, none of my friends and relatives my age or older talk like
that – so why portray us that way?

It’s called ‘stereotyping’ (an oversimplified generalization about a
person or group of people without regard for individual differences,
which leads to prejudicial thinking and discriminatory acts) and it is
alienating – and discriminatory – in so many ways.

And it contributes to
this incredible fear people have of getting older. Folks, really, think
of what the alternative is!!!

THE MATURE VIEW …

I love this Doris Lessing quote:

“The great secret that all old people share is that you
really haven’t changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you
don’t change at all.”

And this one from Betty Friedan:

“Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

And Melissa Etheridge (at the ripe ‘old’ age of 53!):

“The reason that they make us all youth-oriented and vain
and try to think that if we get old we are of no use anymore is because
we get wiser, and they know that. And when I say ‘they’ I mean those
who are fearful of change. We are getting older, and we are getting
wiser, and we are getting freer. And when you get the wisdom and the
truth, then you get the freedom and you get power, and then look out.
Look out.”

Most of the quotes I found on aging are from women. Probably because
this stereotyping applies more to aging women than to men. But here’s a
wonderful quote from William Holden:

“Aging is an inevitable process. I surely wouldn’t want
to grow younger. The older you become, the more you know; your bank
account of knowledge is much richer.”

Yes indeed, our bank account of knowledge, and experience, is much, much richer.
———————-
ABOUT ELAINE
Elaine Singer is a voice actor with 10 years of experience. Her voice evokes maturity, warmth, authenticity and … quirkiness.
Or, from Nurture to Nutty! She has gone from being that ‘warm older
woman grateful for her new hearing aids,’ to the spunky grandma telling
it like it is, to the grocery store clerk rapping over the store PA
system.

Email: elaine@elainesinger.com
Web: www.elainesinger.com