Kristin Linklater and her old sister Alison both attended Downe House; Alison left in 1951, Kristin in 1953.  They had two brothers, Magnus and Andro.  Their mother, Marjorie had also attended Downe House, (MacIntyre, 1926) and she, and both her daughters kept in touch with the school through the Downe House Old Seniors Association. Marjorie MacIntyre, an actress, married the well known writer Eric Linklater in 1933, they settled in Orkney and after a time, moved to the Highlands, near Tain. Although Eric died on mainland Scotland, he is buried in the Orkneys, and Marjorie spent her last years there too. 

There is no doubt that the Orcadian blood ran strong in the Linklater family and in one interview Kristin said she thought that wind and rain were in fact very good for the voice, though she also said she also came from a family who were all ‘vocally strong’.  It is also said that each member of the family, throughout their lives, showed great independence of character.  

Both the Linklater girls became Seniors at school, and Kristin was Head Girl in her last year.  Her sister Alison had gone on to Cambridge to read Classics, which she then went on to teach for a time, but later became a painter.  Kristin went to Lambda after Downe House and the News of Old Seniors pages in the school magazine included this; ‘Kristin Linklater finished her dramatic training last July and since then has had many and various jobs.  She worked in an Espresso bar in Chelsea; interrupted by two very anonymous parts in B.B.C. plays, and one not so anonymous.  She is now in repertory at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews.’ In November 1961, she came down to the school to give a poetry reading with Norman Ayrton who was then the Principal of LAMDA. (Other visiting lecturers in the Michaelmas Term of 1961 splke on Flower Arranging, the Political Situation in Various Parts of Africa and a Climbing Expedition in Greenland.)  

After working in Scotland, she returned to LAMDA to teach for a number of years before heading across the Atlantic.  Kristin reported in the News of Old Seniors in 1966 that she was in the US, ‘training voice-production teachers in her methods under a Rockefeller Foundation grant’. 

She went to the US with the intention of spending just a short period of time there, but ended up staying  for fifty odd years, spending time teaching in New York, Ontario. Minneapolis, Massachusetts and Boston.  Her son Hamish, born in the USA, is an actor. 

She returned to Orkney in 2013 and set up her own voice academy, The Kristin Linklater Voice Centre, a residential, retreat style of establishment in Quoyloo, in the west of the mainland. 

As a vocal coach, Kristin worked with a huge variety of people (not only well known actors) across all ages groups and her principles were always the same, to help her students release their voice from inside, from behind their noses, from inside their throats, so the training was always very physical.  She believed that the human voice was an instrument and her goal was that the person must be heard, rather that the person’s voice. It is said that some actors, emerging from ‘method acting’ training still needed help with their voices; Hamish Linklater wrote that his mother had helped such actors, “They had the naturalism, but they needed it freed.” 

Kristin Linklater’s clear strong voice is inspiring in itself, but what she speaks of, about how to free the voice is fascinating - it is worth finding time to listen to her speak on Youtube, see references below.  

References:  

Kristin Linklater, Obituary, The Times, 23 June 2020 

Kristin Linklater, Obituary, The New York Times, 16 June 2020 

www.linklatervoice.com 

Youtube:  

#All the World’s a Stage 2020 

Spotlight@SDA 

Studio 1 Network La Voce Naturale 

Freeing the Natural Voice, published first in 1976 by Quite Specific Media Group USA, revised and expanded in 2006 by Quite Specific Media Group USA and Nick Hern Books Limited, UK 

Andro Linklater’s obituary of his mother Marjorie, The Independent, 4 July 1997 

Eric Linklater, Obituary, The New York Times, 8 November 1974