Kristin Linklater Papers, circa 1950-2020

Kristin Linklater (1936–2020) was a prominent Scottish voice teacher, actor, director, and author. Born in Edinburgh to novelist Eric Linklater and arts proponent Marjorie (MacIntyre) Linklater, she grew up in the Orkney Isles with her parents and three siblings. She then trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where she met voice trainer Iris Warren. Warren's vocal theories laid the groundwork for what would become the Kristin Linklater Voice Method.

Linklater's teaching career spanned more than six decades and included faculty positions at LAMDA, the London Academy of Theatre Arts, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Emerson College. She also spent many years as the head of acting for the MFA program at Columbia University. In 2013, she returned to Scotland and established the Linklater Voice Centre in Orkney with the purpose of providing actor training and teacher certification. Throughout her career, Linklater trained hundreds of notable actors—including Patrick Stewart, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Angela Bassett, Courtney Vance, and Donald Sutherland—and designated more than 200 teachers worldwide to carry her method onward.

Beyond teaching, Linklater was a founding member of several pioneering theatre companies, including the Working Theatre, Open Theater, and Company of Women. She also co-founded Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, collaborating with Tina Packer to integrate the Linklater Voice Method within Shakespearean performance. Her work incorporated political, poetic, and deeply human elements into the worlds of both voice and theatre.

Linklater's voice, acting, and teaching methodologies were codified in two influential texts: Freeing the Natural Voice (1976, revised 2006), a foundational work for actors, teachers, and public speakers, and Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice (1992), which applied her techniques directly to classical performance.

Over the course of her lifetime, Linklater received numerous honors, including grants and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She had one child, a son named Hamish, with actor and stage builder James Cormeny. She passed away in Orkney, Scotland, in June 2020.