Christina Gutekunst | Actingandvoice

Christina studied veterinary medicine and agriculture before settling on the theatre. She first trained as an actor in Germany, in Berlin and Stuttgart, and with Ulle Weber, a Berliner Ensemble actor, and then with Gisela Spoerri, an actor and tutor from Max Reinhardt’s Ensemble. In Britain, she studied at the Chrysalis School run by Peter and Barbara Bridgmont, who had worked with Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Workshop. Her training has covered Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov and Rudolf Steiner theories of acting. She went on to gain a Post Graduate diploma and MA (Distinction) in voice studies at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama – her thesis was on ‘Closing the gap between the actor and the text’ and this has become her mission throughout her career.

She has taught voice in numerous acting schools, including The Courtyard, Drama Studio London and Mountview and became Head of Voice at East 15 in 2003. Here she has focused the voice work on integration within the actor’s acting process so that the voice finds a natural, organic and full expression of the actor in the imaginary circumstances of the character. She has worked across all years of all BA and MA courses with British and international students from all over the world. Her work also involves coaching many plays, scenes, sonnets and monologues, indoor and outdoor performances, shows at the school and in the W.End, contemporary and classical. This has included Shakespeare and Brecht, Williams and Miller, Pinter and Churchill, Shaw and Wilde, Chekhov and Gorky, commedia dell’arte, Beckett and Lorca.

Philip Weaver, Head of BA Acting Course, East 15
“Christina’s deep knowledge of voice pedagogy and understanding of text analysis, as well as her appreciation of the Stanislavski-based acting process we favour, has helped the students to organically link vocal expression with language facilitating a fluid, creative process of character development.”

Christina’s work outside E15 has included vocal coaching in London on professional shows; acting as German accent coach for Woyzeck with John Boyega at the Old Vic, and for the Ant and Dec Show. On The Bill, she helped the distinguished German actor, Andreas Schmidt-Schaller, with his English. She has also performed and directed voice overs for Les Frogs and Foreign Versions, and co-ran two theatre companies.

Lucy Skilbeck (Director of Actor Training, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art)
“Christina developed actors who were vocally high-skilled and able to work within a wide range of material and theatre spaces. . . evidenced in the progress all of the students make not only in their technical voice skills but in their imaginative and expressive use and understanding of text and language. The greatest evidence is in the professional success of the East 15 graduates many of whom have gone on to enduring careers in theatre including the RSC, National, and West End, film, television and radio.”

Apart from co-writing Voice into Acting, she contributed a chapter, Organic Voice: Vocal Integration through Actor Training in a book for Routledge, Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond (edited by Christina Kapadocha, 2020).
(https://www.routledge.com/Somatic-Voices-in-Performance-Research-and-Beyond/Kapadocha/p/book/9781138360600)