Voice and acting coach Patsy Rodenburg

DATE August 28, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Patsy Rodenburg discusses her techniques for training
voices
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

It's Book Week on our show, featuring interviews with the authors of all sorts
of books. Today, advice books on how to speak and what not to wear.

When you're nervous or self-conscious, it can affect your voice. That's one
reason why Patsy Rodenburg is often in the wings coaching actors on opening
night. Patsy Rodenburg is a vocal coach who has trained many leading British
actors including Ralph Fiennes, Sir Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith,
Trevor Nunn and Daniel Day-Lewis. Rodenburg is the director of voice at
London's Royal National Theatre, and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

But she doesn't work just with actors. She's trained public speakers of every
sort, from teachers to politicians. She's written books for actors and for
the rest of us. I asked her what kind of work she does with actors backstage
to help them prepare for performances.

Ms. PATSY RODENBURG (Author, "Speaking Shakespeare"): There are certain
things that can happen to people when they're very stressful, a lot of the
listeners will feel it; it's not only actors. But if you get very nervous,
you tend to lift out of your body. What I mean by that is the shoulders start
to come up, the jaw might tighten, and if that happens, you stop breathing.
In fact, if you just lift your shoulders now, and you try that, it's quite
hard to get the breath in. If you can't get the breath in, you've got no
power. You can't think, you can't feel, so that needs to be centered, which
means maybe a lot of releasing across the shoulders, the upper chest, where
the sternum is. People get very tight there. This is completely unnatural
for the human body, but that's the sort of stress we put on ourselves, and
when that happens, the breath fails, and within about three or four minutes of
trying to use your voice, your voice begins to diminish. So people will say
to me--it's rather moving, actually. They say, `I'm much more interesting
than I sound.' And it's because their voice is being trapped. Because--well,
I personally believe that everyone has a fantastic voice.

GROSS: Can you give us an example of a couple of the warm-up kind of
exercises you'll give actors to do right before a performance to warm up their
voice, to get them breathing in a relaxed way, in a deep way?

Ms. RODENBURG: I would start by checking in on their body. I would check in
the placing of their head, their shoulders, the release of the shoulders, the
spine. When you get very nervous, a lot of people might collapse through the
spine. As soon as that happens, the voice tightens, the breath stops. The
way you stand is terribly important. You see a lot of what I'm talking about
is about subliminal communication. I would say to anybody, long before
somebody speaks, you know whether you're going to listen to them. So the
body, centering the body, stretching the rib cage. You know, there are certain
parts of the body that get very rusty very quickly. The rib cage will go
within about three or four days of not working it. So this area around the
center of the body has to be kept flexible and strong to power the voice.

GROSS: Can you demonstrate a couple of the vocal warm-ups?

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, after getting the breath into place and getting the
breath underneath the voice so that the voice is being used with a breath, you
start to warm up the voice. You start very gentle humming, very
simple--(humming)--all over the place, just beginning to get the voice warming
up. And when it warms up, it begins to feel--it doesn't splutter. If you try
that first thing in the morning, it splutters, so you basically get the voice
motoring. You then warm up resonators, the amplifiers of the voice, the head,
the nose, the face, the throat, the chest. You then warm up a range of the
voice.

Now all this work--the image I always give to actors is I want them to know
the work so well that they can forget it. So you have to get all this going
in order for them not to think about their voice on stage. I don't want them
to think about their voice.

GROSS: How do you warm up the resonators in your head?

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, if you put your hand on your head and you hum right up
there--(humming)--you start to get a buzz up there, and the whole voice begins
to lift. And if you hum into your nose, you'll feel a buzz
there--(humming)--the quality will change. And as the voice warm ups, you can
get stronger and stronger with these exercises.

GROSS: You know, you point out that when we talk about singers, we praise
them for having a big range--`Oh, she can sing two octaves, three octaves.'
But we kind of forget about that with speech. And you say most people just
speak across, say, three notes when they could be speaking across several
octaves.

Ms. RODENBURG: Absolutely. And organically, if we get excited about an idea
or passionately connected to a feeling, the voice wants to move. It's that
the voice has been closed down. We all come into the world with this
magnificent instrument. I must work on a voice for maybe 50 hours a
week--voices. It never ceases to amaze me how extraordinary the human voice
is, but most of us don't use it.

GROSS: Is there a way you could give me an example of the difference between
speaking on, say, three different notes and then using the full range of the
voice to speak?

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, if I just now closed down my voice, you know, you can
hear me, but really nothing's really going on, is it? I mean, I'm now just
sort of droning on. Now--this is very naughty of me, but some people use it
as a technique to put people to sleep so that they get their way, you know?
You can just drone on and on and on. But if you actually want to speak about
something that matters to you, naturally the voice would move. I mean, it
gets excited. I mean, my voice moves. Your voice moves when you get
animated. That's the human voice.

GROSS: Well, are there exercises that you give people to help them use their
full range when they're speaking?

Ms. RODENBURG: The first exercise would just be to simply stretch it--not
sing, but just come down through your range on a glide--(makes noises). You
just start doing something that simple. Now what most people'll start to
notice when they do that are their little breaks or blips. And that means
that the voice has got tension in certain places. So we might not know that
break or blip is there, but unconsciously, we do know that so we don't use our
voice in that place. So some people will say to me, `I've got two voices.
I've got my top voice and my bottom voice,' and in between is a break. So the
first stage is to stretch the voice out, to absolutely get it free and then
dare use it. So I would make people--not only actors, but people who have to
command attention in any field of life, I would make them speak using that
range until they feel that they can. And then you want to say to them, `Now
that it has worked out, forget it,' and the voice will sound more interesting.
It will perk up.

GROSS: Now you point out in your book that many singers are frightened of
speaking and many speakers are frightened of singing, and that those two
voices rarely meet and overlap with ease. You say there's often a grinding of
vocal gears as a singer moves into speaking or a speaker into singing. Why is
that?

Ms. RODENBURG: I think it's because they've been taught that there is a
speaking voice and a singing voice as opposed to a whole voice. Many singers
know they've worked their voice very particularly, sometimes seven hours a
day--just the singing voice--and they don't necessarily feel that connects to
the speaking voice. So you will often hear a singer introduce a song, you
know, maybe in a recital and they become inaudible because they don't realize
that speaking requires work in the same way as singing. A fantastic exercise
that will link the voice is intoning. It's something I would ask anyone to do
if they want to open up their voice.

GROSS: What's the exercise?

Ms. RODENBURG: (Singing tonally) One, two, three--(in normal voice) you
know, just in tone, just keep a very steady, fluent sound coming out of--and
it sounds very odd. Some people get very embarrassed, but (singing tonally)
one, two, three, four. (In normal voice) And as you start to do that, the
voice begins to motor. If you then drop into speaking from intoning, you
often get a very strong speaking voice. So it would be something like
(singing tonally) one, two, three, (in normal voice) four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten, as opposed to--(in a hushed tone) most of us sort of do this
sort of speaking when--a lot of singers, they will pull back. But if they can
tap into their singing power and make a transition, actually on the same
breath--which is a trick--it shocks them into it. The spoken voice begins to
be like the singing voice. And if you're a speaker that wants to sing, the
intoning can take you into singing.

GROSS: You know, I think it's particularly true of a lot of women that they
speak in one octave and then sing much higher than that.

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes.

GROSS: Why is that?

Ms. RODENBURG: This is very complex, but I'll try and explain it simply.
Most women, with their bodies--it starts in the bodies--close down their
bodies. They tighten around their bodies. They stand with their feet
together. They clamp their thighs. All those physical constrictions stop the
breath. And so when they speak, the voice is actually tighter than it should
be. Now it just so happens that at the particular moment we live in, the whim
of fashion is to have a lower voice. (Speaking in deeper tone) So a lot of
women, in order to get power, push their voices down, you know, there, (in
normal voice) so that when they start to sing, the voice begins to jump up
away from the tension. The pushing down on the voice is another form of
tension. But put that with all the sort of physical squeezing that a lot of
women do in their bodies, you know, tightening the shoulders, tightening the
waist and everything, holding the stomach in--you need to release your stomach
in order to use your voice. This is very hard for people when they feel that
they have to hold their stomach in. But if you open those tensions and just
try using your voice, the voice will change.

GROSS: My guest is vocal coach Patsy Rodenburg. We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: My guest is Patsy Rodenburg. She's the director of voice at London's
Royal National Theatre and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She's
written books for actors and public speakers.

Do you work with people about finding the natural placement of their voice or
the natural range of their voice?

Ms. RODENBURG: Absolutely.

GROSS: How do you find that?

Ms. RODENBURG: That's where I start.

GROSS: How do you find that?

Ms. RODENBURG: You start, again, by releasing useless tensions in the body.
You then concentrate on getting the breath into the body. Most of us don't
take our full breath. We don't feel the breath enter right the way down into
the lower abdominal area. So that's the first series of habits.

We all come into the world with this fantastic voice. If you listen to a baby
cry, tiny little vocal folds. The voice goes on and on, this amazing range,
and gradually it closes down. This is my philosophy: If the voice is free
and is not trapped and is powered by the breath, it will go where it wants to
go, and also at that moment, you will find that you have a center to your
voice, which is what you're born with. The voice has a particular note. We
can extend away from that, but most people today don't speak with their free
voice. They speak with a lot of tension in their voice. So the whole of the
work starts--if I'm training young actors, that takes about a year to find
their natural voice as opposed to what I call their habitual voice, the habits
that we've gathered that clutter the voice.

GROSS: And is there an exercise you'd give an actor to help them find what
their most comfortable or most natural speaking range is?

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes. I would isolate what they tend to do to stop themselves.
I mean, the worse thing you can do to your voice--and you see it on chat
shows. You see it in those sort of trial shows that you have in America--is
to push the voice, because that--you think you're being authoritative, but
you're actually blocking your voice and it hurts. If ever your voice is
uncomfortable, if it tires, if it hurts after using it, you're in some way
doing some damage.

(Speaking in hushed voice) A lot of people do this, you know? This is what I
call--it's actually devoicing. When I do this, I'm using half my vocal folds.
I'm not using my whole voice, and this is very tiring. I call it--it's a bit
naughty of me, but I call it `the caring voice.' I was doing a lecture
recently in London to the Freud Society, and I was doing these voices. And I
looked at all of them when I was doing them and suddenly realized that I'd
done the therapist voice, you know. This is this voice, which is, `I'm really
listening. I'm really'--but in fact, it's actually--if you just do that for a
bit, anybody, you can feel that the voice begins to tighten.

(In normal voice) So those sorts of habits are maybe fashions. So I unlock
that habit and then get the voice completely without--you shouldn't feel the
voice. The first thing you should feel is that the voice leaves you, the word
has left you. So I would use, maybe, very gentle `ooh' sound. The human
voice works like an arc, it's up and out. So I would get somebody to look at
a point just above eye line and very gently send a sound there, like (makes
ooh sound), and eventually, they begin to feel that there's no pressure in the
throat at all. The voice just leaves. If they feel this pressure, there's
the oldest trick in the book, which is to think of a yawn. And as you think
of a yawn, the throat opens and the voice escapes.

Now I know you can't speak yawning, but it's a way of beginning to feel the
freedom. And as soon as the voice gets free, not only do you have more
options and the voice will move more organically, but people listen to you.

GROSS: Can you do that yawn thing that you're talking about?

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, if I just think--in fact, actually, it was how they used
to train actors about 80 years ago, you know, (in different tone of voice) to
speak on the edge of a yawn, which is why they all sounded like that, you
know. (In normal voice) But we can't do that anymore, nor should we, because
it sounds odd. But if you just start (yawns)--it's a very good warm-up
exercise--if you start just speaking on the edge of a yawn, the throat begins
to open, breath comes in freer because there's no blocking in the throat. If
you then just take yourself into speaking thinking of that yawn, the voice
starts to feel easy, effortless, effortless.

GROSS: What is it that enables an actor to project in a large theater without
shouting?

Ms. RODENBURG: A free voice, something that I call support, which is the
breath underneath the voice, getting the breath in and then underneath the
voice so it's actually powering the voice. Here's a very simple, again, what
I call a cheap trick. If you push against a wall gently and keep your
shoulders free and you begin to breathe, you will feel your breath engage
lower muscles in the body, muscles in the abdominal area. And if you then,
very gently, speak with that push, your voice will suddenly get much more
clearer and powerful.

The next stage is to allow the word to leave you. Now that sounds very odd,
but if you want to be heard even on a microphone, the voice has to be finished
outside you. So people do a lot of swallowing, you know, if I pull back my
voice now I just pull it back, you know. I don't finish the word. You've got
to breathe, support, keep the voice free and define the word in space. You
don't need to be loud. You can be very clear in space as long as those three
things are in place.

GROSS: The exercise we were talking about where you're pushing against the
wall...

Ms. RODENBURG: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ..to, I guess, connect with your breath, is that...

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes. And you then speak with the outward breath, with that
power coming through your body and supporting the voice. Actually, you can do
it in a meeting. You're being bullied. Somebody's getting at you. Even if
you put your hand on a desk and just push into that desk, the breath will drop
into the body. You will take tension away from the shoulders, which will
always weaken your voice. You've got no chance, really, to communicate
effectively if there's tension in the shoulders. I mean, if you just push
against the desk and breathe, the voice begins--the breath begins to settle in
the body and then you have the power.

GROSS: Do you work with politicians?

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes, I do.

GROSS: What kind of problems do they come to you with and what typically do
you work with them on?

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, there are certain arenas that politicians have to work
in. In the House of Commons in London, it's an arena, a geography of
conflict, so for lots of women that is very, very difficult. Women are better
communicators in more informal settings. Because, again, their habits of
giving in, giving way. So I do a lot of the young women, members of
Parliament, who find it very intimidating to talk across that geography of
conflict. And I did one whole session a year or so ago--they have to stand up
to ask a question. Now if they don't stand up with authority and energy and
center, nobody notices them. It's quite extraordinary. I had 30 of them.
And I watched them on television. And they were standing up and wobbling and
they're trying to ask a question, apologizing, snatching their breath. If you
snatch the breath--I call it the victim breath. (Gasps) As soon as somebody
does that, they're easy, they're pushovers. So the--I did a whole session
with them just standing up breathing and asking the question with authority.
And within a week they were being noticed. So those particular women had huge
problems even getting noticed because of--their habits are very--they're good
listeners. That's all fantastic but in that arena it didn't serve them.

The other arena that I work with at Cabinet, a young Cabinet member daring to
answer the prime minister back, and doing it with authority, getting into the
conversation, not--and men have these habits as well. But women, they will
trail off. They're what I call `the falling line.' Also very hard to be
heard in space if you have the falling line which is this thing of, you know,
I just start speaking and I step off, I give up halfway. Now men are very
good at holding debate, following that energy through. Now if you try and ask
a question to somebody and you trail off, you're not going to be noticed
again. So, again, it's not so dramatic but in order to hold your voice, to
hold space, what I call `own the space with your voice' so that people notice
you, and that can be trained.

GROSS: I think a lot of times when people's voices trail off, it's because
they don't--they're not confident of what they're saying or they're not sure
where the...

Ms. RODENBURG: Absolutely.

GROSS: ...thought is going. I know that happens to me a lot. I start a
thought and then I think `Hmm, I have no idea where I'm going to end this.'

Ms. RODENBURG: But you stop it with energy, you see. You don't apologize and
drop back in. What I'm talking about is you can actually see people dropping
back into themselves. The whole energy of this voice is just pulling in. You
can stop, but hold your energy out, you know, and that is about--you're
absolutely right. I'm talking about the technical thing. You're talking
about something as important, if not more important, feeling that you have the
right to speak. And if you don't feel you have the right to speak, you
develop habits like that, falling off, which give you less right to speak and
more rights to other people to squash you.

GROSS: Patsy Rodenburg is the director of voice at London's Royal National
Theatre and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Our interview was recorded
in 2000 after the publication of her book "The Actor Speaks." We'll hear more
in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

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(Credits)

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GROSS: Coming up, fashion crimes and misdemeanors. We hear from the creators
of the BBC's "What Not To Wear," Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine.
Their book of the same name is a best-seller.

And we continue our conversation with Patsy Rodenburg as our Book Week
continues.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with vocal coach Patsy Rodenburg. She's trained many top British actors,
including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Daniel Day-Lewis. Rodenburg is the
director of voice at London's Royal National Theatre and the Guildhall School
of Music & Drama. Her books include "The Actor Speaks" and "Speaking
Shakespeare." She works with all sorts of public speakers from teachers to
politicians.

Now one thing politicians have to do is make speeches and read from a text
that they may or may not have written themselves. And I think a lot of people
are in that position of having to give a speech to a group that they belong to
or to people who they work with or, you know, at a conference or whatever.
What's some of your advice to people who have to read from a script? And, I
mean, they're not actors...

Ms. RODENBURG: No.

GROSS: ...but they still want to sound natural, even though it's an unnatural
situation.

Ms. RODENBURG: I think you can do two things that are very, very useful that
will help immediately. You can warm up. You can--it's not going to
happen--if you're getting nervous and you've got to read, you should at least
practice a bit of breathing, getting the breath, warming up the voice. But a
lot of people come to me and they say, `I work on these speeches and they
never work,' and I just ask a very simple question, and I say, `Do you work on
them out loud?' And they say, `No.' Well, you can't work on your voice
silently. You've got to--even if you get the first sentence, and read the
sentence out loud before a presentation, at least you're giving yourself
physical memory of what it's going to be like. You can mouth the text
quietly, but the mouth is doing the work. So you're actually feeling the word
in your mouth, so that you're telling the muscles what to do. It's more than
an intellectual process, speaking, it's a physical process.

And the other thing I would say to anybody who had to, on a regular basis,
read out, is practice. Read out loud every day. Use your voice. Within 10
days, it gets easier.

GROSS: Now, you know, you were talking before about some of the things that
happen to us physically when we're nervous, as we often are before we have to
do public speaking, or as actors are before they go on stage, you know, the
shoulders get tense and the breath gets constricted. But I think many of us
tend to talk faster when we're more nervous, too...

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes.

GROSS: ...and that's a bad thing if you're trying to communicate.

Ms. RODENBURG: Very.

GROSS: But sometimes you're so self-conscious in that situation of public
speaking that it's hard to take control over all the things that you should be
concerned about.

Ms. RODENBURG: A couple of little tricks. Do you want some tricks?

GROSS: Yes, absolutely.

Ms. RODENBURG: OK. Now, again, we're going back to the breath and then I'll
go to the word. When you get fast, it's because you're breathing ahead of
your head. When people rush, it's because their voice and their breath have
divided. In acting tones we have a saying called `being in the moment.' You
have to just mean what you say as you say it. When you get very, very
nervous, it's like your head has trotted off and your mouth can't keep up, so
you start sort of to stumbling. The number-one trick is to take the breath,
and if you're feeling very nervous, even halfway through a presentation,
adjust your shoulders. Nobody will see you.

The other thing you can do is just very gently, quietly sigh out. As you sigh
out, the breath calms down, and then you can start again. So number-one
trick, try and breathe slowly and deeply and calmly. Before you do the
presentation, you can make yourself do it almost unbearably slowly, and that
will help the muscles remember what they have to do.

But the next trick is you can keep yourself at the right pace if you speak the
whole word. When you listen to somebody rushing, you know, half the words are
going (mumbles), half the words are not spoken, and they just sort of skid
rather like Bambi on ice. They just skid all over the text. So you just try
and speak clearly, and that will help.

GROSS: So you recommend, among other things, that before you even begin to
give the talk, while you're waiting backstage or...

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes.

GROSS: ...whatever that you do a lot of deep, slow breathing.

Ms. RODENBURG: Do you know, we do this organically. I've gotten of my
exercises from watching people under stress. People under stress will often
put their hand on the upper chest. And that is to stop the breath lifting
there, because that is a way of trying to get the breath down. Or if you push
with one hand against the wall and just take your time--breathe in, breathe in
calmly--everything's going to be better in life if you breathe. I always say
to my dentist, `Why don't you have "breathe" written on the ceiling? Because
as your tooth is being filled, it would be better.' But, you know, we just
forget these basic things.

GROSS: Now a lot of people are confused about what the difference is between
breathing from your chest and breathing from your diaphragm. And I know vocal
teachers always talk about the importance of breathing from the diaphragm. If
you don't know how to breathe through your diaphragm...

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, I talk about it...

GROSS: Yeah.

Ms. RODENBURG: The lower abdominal area. Here's a little exercise you can
do.

GROSS: Yeah.

Ms. RODENBURG: If you sit on a chair and your feet are firmly on the
floor--and, remember, that if your feet aren't on the floor, it's harder to
breathe. Flop over, put your elbows on your knees. Release the back of your
neck, release your shoulders so that you're flopped over, and very gently
begin to breathe in and out. Within a few breaths, you will start to feel the
back of the rib cage begin to move, the back of the rib cage moving easily.
And that means that the breath is going lower into the body. If you then
gently sit up, the breath will feel calmer.

You can take this further. You can hug yourself--stand, hug yourself, keep
the shoulders released, although you're hugging; keep your knees released. A
lot of tension, and a lot of people when they speak in public shake profoundly
because their knees are locked. You know, you cannot use your voice with
locked knees. It's an absolute anatomical fact. So keep your knees released,
you're hugging yourself, and you flop over. And in that position again, you
breathe in and out. You will start to feel the back of the rib cage; you will
start to feel the abdominal area release. And at that moment--you've just got
to be a bit careful, 'cause you might feel a bit dizzy--you let your arms
drop, you come up and you feel calmer, you feel wider. The body--you know, to
take proper breath means that you have to take up space.

GROSS: Did you ever have vocal problems yourself?

Ms. RODENBURG: Yes, absolutely.

GROSS: What kind of problems?

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, I was sent, when I was about eight, to a speech teacher,
an elocution teacher, we called them then, and she was a terrifying woman.
And I never achieved what she wanted me to do, which was to speak well. And I
had a terrible time. And I find communicating very problematic. It scares
me. I don't think you could teach with sympathy if you found it easy. So
I've gone deliberately into an arena that has always frightened me.

GROSS: What was your speaking like before you became more confident?

Ms. RODENBURG: I had a stutter and I couldn't say certain sounds. And I was
mocked appallingly at school, so you just get quieter and quieter and you
don't want to read out because people are going to laugh at you. And that
memory I still carry. And I then went to the leading school in the world at
the time, and I started to feel, `Well, I might be able to do this,' and, in
fact, I enjoy helping others that find it difficult. And, you know, most
actors find speaking difficult. That's why they want to be actors. They're
not extroverts. All the great actors I work with are very shy people.

GROSS: I have noticed that interviewing actors, a lot of actors, they have
fantastic voices in films and on stage, but when they're speaking
extemporaneously, some actors have much weaker voices and sound incredibly
unsure of themselves.

Ms. RODENBURG: Right. You see, they need a text. They need to play
somebody else to release themselves. That's part of the issue. But that's
maybe why they want to be an actor. And that's maybe why I wanted to be a
voice coach, because it's difficult. If it matters to you, it's difficult,
and it matters to me.

GROSS: Professor Rodenburg, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for
talking with us.

Ms. RODENBURG: Well, thank you.

GROSS: Patsy Rodenburg is the director or voice at London's Royal National
Theatre and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. I spoke with her in 2000,
after the publication of her book, "The Actor Speaks."

Coming up, what not to wear.

This is FRESH AIR.

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Interview: Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine discuss their
BBC show, "What Not To Wear"
TERRY GROSS, host:

My next two guests think they know what I should wear. And they probably
wouldn't be satisfied with what you're wearing, either.

Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine are the hosts of the BBC series "What
Not To Wear," which is shown here on BBC America. It was one of the first hit
makeover shows. An American version of the program is shown on The Learning
Channel. Woodall and Constantine also have a book called "What Not To Wear,"
which was recently published in paperback in the US.

Here's how their show works. A woman who is totally lacking in fashion sense
is nominated by family and friends for a makeover. Woodall and Constantine
ambush the woman and tell her she's been chosen for the show and that she's
been secretly filmed so that she and we can get a good look at her fashion
problems. Then the hosts go through the woman's closet with her, demonstrate
how awful her clothes are, throw the biggest offenders in a trash can and give
her 2,000 pounds, about $4,000, to buy a new wardrobe with their help.

The hosts say they need to be cruel to be kind. Here's a scene in which
Woodall and Constantine demonstrate their credo while working with a
middle-aged woman of Indian descent, watching the secret footage they shot of
her.

(Soundbite of "What Not To Wear")

Ms. SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE (Co-host): How much black do you wear?

Unidentified Woman: Quite a bit.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: You do, don't you?

Ms. TRINNY WOODALL (Co-host): Can you see how that black is making you look
really tired and enhancing your dark circles under your eyes?

Unidentified Woman: But it's making me look slimmer.

Ms. WOODALL: It's not making you look slimmer. It's making you look like
you've got jaundice, actually.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: You know, the cut is what makes you look slimmer.

Ms. WOODALL: Oh, my God.

Unidentified Woman: What?

Ms. WOODALL: We're out in public. You're in a supermarket. You look like
you're wearing a sack. Shame on you, woman!

Unidentified Woman: But that's comfortable sack.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: But if you only had comfortable clothes that were flattering
for you, you'd never go to that kind of shoddiness.

GROSS: The goal of "What Not To Wear" isn't to turn the woman into a fashion
model. I asked Susannah Constantine what the goal is.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: It's really important for us to look at a woman's lifestyle
as well as the way she looks physically, so we take into account whether she's
got children, what kind of job she has, where she wants to go, whether she
wants to get the man, whether she wants to get the divorce, whether she wants
to get the job. And then we look at her figure, and we make her understand
what she loves and hates about her body, and we explain that, you know, she
doesn't need to go on a diet, she doesn't need to have surgery, she doesn't
need to exercise. She can make a huge difference by wearing the right clothes
today, here and now.

GROSS: You know what I was wondering? If a lot of, like, husbands who have
no clue about how to dress and have, you know, awful haircuts and really old
eyeglass frames, are complaining to you about how their wives look, you know?

Ms. CONSTANTINE: It's not real--I mean, more often than not, it's a kind of
really good girlfriend or a female family member that's nominated them. And
sometimes it is the husband, but generally when it's the husband, if he is a
kind of spotty little nerd, he is nominating his wife through love because he
feels that she really needs a break. We have had, you know, a few
disillusioned men who have nominated their partners because they think that
they do need to look better, but really, in actual fact, they're the ones who
should be looking at themselves at the end of the day, and that's quite
evident in the show. It's like by the end of the show, you know, the woman
has moved on to such a level that this poor bloke has been left behind.

And we had one instance where a really sweet couple--and husband nominated the
wife, along with his sisters, the ugly sisters, who should have been on our
show. And by the end of it, Maria looked so wonderful, and Matthew, the
husband, was left behind. And he felt really gutted that his wife had now
become this sort of glamorous icon in his eyes. And she then nominated him
for the show, and we made him over, and by the end of that they were level
pegging, and it was a very happy ending to the story.

GROSS: You're afraid they would have gotten divorced had you not done the
makeover for him afterwards?

Ms. WOODALL: No, I just think--it was very charming with him, as a man,
because we all know, you know, as women, we can discuss issues of how we feel
about our bodies quite openly. And I think men--it's more taboo. And this
man was quite a large man. And I remember he said this comment to Susannah.
He said, `I feel like, you know, the big, fat man at the back of the pub.'
And he was quite emotional and expressive. So it was amazing to, you know,
dress him so that he felt that he'd lost like, you know, 50 pounds, and he
felt handsome. He felt sexually attractive--all the things that had just gone
from his life.

GROSS: People show you their wardrobes before you make them over, and there
are some pretty horrible garments in the wardrobes of the women that you
choose. After all, that's why you chose them in the first place. And you
throw the things that you don't like from their closets into a big trash can.
Sometimes you basically throw the whole closet in there and you keep like one
item that you think is passable. Do you actually like give the clothes back
to the woman afterwards or do you like cart it off to...

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Those clothes are gone for good, pretty much.

GROSS: They're really in the Dumpster for good, huh?

Ms. CONSTANTINE: No, they really are. They're gone for good and, you know,
that is the kind of greatest hurdle to get over for a woman, because, you
know, there's a lot of emotional attachment to some of these clothes, you
know, these items of clothing. It might be, you know, the dress that they
wore on their first date or, you know, the cardigan they wrapped their new
puppy in when it arrived. But by the end of the process, they're actually
very willing to get rid of their clothes.

GROSS: But, gee, shouldn't they be hanging on to those things for sentimental
reasons?

Ms. WOODALL: No. Why? What's so good about the sentimentality of that?
You've got nothing.

GROSS: Well, it's like having a photograph or something, you know. It's the
same thing.

Ms. WOODALL: I mean, some people do have items and what they do is they end
up framing them or hanging them on the wall, which is quite amusing. But what
they can do--we started to make three piles. We make the pile to give to
friends that you shopped with who, you know, those clothes suited them a lot
better than they ever suited you. Then we have a sort of resale pile where
they can, you know, get some money back and sell them in a secondhand store.
And then we have the kind of too disgusting to even give to anyone pile, and
those do go in the trash.

GROSS: You know, here's the problem I run into when I clean out my closet. I
look at that big, ugly, but warm sweater, and I say to myself, `I could get
rid of this because it's kind of too ugly to wear, but if there's war or
famine, I'll really want the warmth of this sweater and I won't care that it's
ugly.' I mean, it's...

Ms. CONSTANTINE: That is so extreme.

GROSS: Isn't it?

Ms. CONSTANTINE: You must have the gas mask. You must have the bunker,
everything...

GROSS: No, I have none of that. I have nothing. I have nothing.

Ms. WOODALL: I don't believe that.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: I do. I'll tell you what...

GROSS: I just have this incredible guilt about getting rid of clothes.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Yeah, but, you know, someone else out there less fortunate
than you maybe could really benefit from those clothes, so maybe give it to
charity and then you know that some...

GROSS: That is what I do. That is what I do when I do do it.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Well, that's the way to go, and then someone else who
doesn't even have a roof over their head will benefit from your warm jersey.

Ms. WOODALL: Yeah.

GROSS: They'll have the good clothes if there's a war.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Yeah.

Ms. WOODALL: Yeah, exactly.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: You'll freeze!

GROSS: That's right.

Ms. WOODALL: Yeah.

GROSS: What are some of the biggest offenders that you typically trash, the
offenders that show up in the most closets?

Ms. WOODALL: I think the universal offender is the pleated, tapered,
chino-type trouser, which is very high-waisted.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Are you wearing those now, Terry?

GROSS: I am not, no.

Ms. WOODALL: Good girl. And they are something that, you know, offends
every woman's shape. So if you have a flabby tummy and you have that kind of
pleated, high-waisted trouser, your stomach will just begin to resemble a
waterbed. And if you have hips and you have these trousers, then all you look
at when you see a woman's shape who has bigger hips is the width of her hips,
because the trousers are tapered at the bottom towards the ankle that it
distorts your leg. If you have a big butt, high-waisted trousers, especially
sans pockets at the back, will just make your bottom so huge that people will
just be staggered by it.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: A lovely lady engineer, who we can see through the window
giggling, is looking at her own pair of trousers...

Ms. WOODALL: Yeah.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: ...and I think she's going to take them off in a minute and
put them in the trash can.

GROSS: So what are some of the other typical offenders that you find in
women's closets?

Ms. WOODALL: Well, something that is actually stronger in America than in
England, the same thing in a short. And you have much better weather here.
But, you know, walking down the streets of New York in the last few days, we
have seen many women who could be, you know, 16 or could be 60 and they wear
shorts, chino shorts. And they're like a men's short, you know, and they're
kind of wider than they are long, with probably double the amount of pleats.
And that is just the most unflattering thing for a woman.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: It's so unfeminine. There's nothing appealing about those
shorts, and there are so many alternatives out there. Why not just wear a
skirt? A skirt is much cooler. You don't get a sweaty gusset. You know,
it's like let the air get up in between your legs. You know, it's much cooler
to wear a skirt. Women are very fortunate. In men, it's harder, so men--you
know, for men, shorts are a good alternative. As long as they don't have the
pleats at the front and they're more like a Bermuda short, they can get away
with it. But for women...

Ms. WOODALL: Susannah, Terry's been very quiet. I'm wondering if she's got
some of them...

Ms. CONSTANTINE: She's wearing...

GROSS: No, no.

Ms. WOODALL: Terry...

GROSS: I'll tell you what I was thinking, though.

Ms. WOODALL: Yeah.

GROSS: Here's what I'm thinking. I'm one of the people who like never wears
skirts. I always feel like...

Ms. WOODALL: What's wrong with your legs?

GROSS: It's not even a question of hiding my legs. It's that I feel like I
walk differently, and I sit differently, and then somehow, I don't feel me in
a skirt.

Ms. WOODALL: So are you scared of being feminine?

GROSS: I wouldn't say I'm scared of being feminine, but I think I just tend
to wear more, you know, like shirts and jackets and pants and...

Ms. WOODALL: So you feel more comfortable to be androgynous?

GROSS: I don't think it's quite androgynous, but...

Ms. WOODALL: Do you wear dresses?

GROSS: No, no.

Ms. WOODALL: OK.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: We need to get our hands on you, Terry. That's the bottom
line. We need any of Terry's friends who are listening to this show, when we
come out to America, please nominate her, because it sounds like we need to
get our hands on her.

GROSS: No, but why should I have to wear a skirt or a dress or look, quote,
"feminine"?

Ms. WOODALL: Well, unless you have legs like mine, which Susannah says boots
were invented for because my calves and ankles are so thick, I think that--and
also, can I ask you, Terry, how tall are you?

GROSS: I'm really short.

Ms. WOODALL: OK.

GROSS: I'm about five feet.

Ms. WOODALL: Another little point with that is that when you are shorter, if
you wear a neat skirt, you look taller than if you wear trousers sometimes, as
long as you keep...

GROSS: What do you mean by a neat skirt? Do you mean...

Ms. WOODALL: I don't mean like a huge A-line rah-rah skirt...

GROSS: Right.

Ms. WOODALL: ...OK, which would just wear you, because I think the shorter
one is, you have to be quite neat with your clothes. But if you always wear
trousers and if you wore a neat little jacket nipped in quite--you know,
showing off your figure, that might be OK, but I somehow think that's not the
kind of jacket you wear. I do feel it's more of a men's shaped blazer that
you might wear. Tell me if I'm wrong there.

GROSS: I don't now. What do the people in the control room think?

Ms. WOODALL: Well...

GROSS: They say wrong.

Ms. WOODALL: And we're just, you know...

GROSS: They say you're wrong about the jacket.

Ms. WOODALL: OK. So they do say you wear nipped and feminine jackets, do
they? No, I don't think so. Come on. Come on. OK. But basically, if you
wore a little skirt and a sort of fitted top and you show your legs off, by
showing more legs and arms, it will make you taller.

GROSS: Huh.

Ms. WOODALL: Just trust me. I mean, it's really worth a try.

GROSS: But I know...

Ms. CONSTANTINE: And also...

GROSS: Wait a minute. I know you'd also suggest that I wear heels, which I
really can't do that.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: No.

Ms. WOODALL: No.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Not at all. As soon as a smaller person starts wearing a
very high heel, she looks like a small person who wants to be taller, OK.
It's much better to have the confidence to wear, you know, a little low kitten
heel if you want to be more elegant or flat shoes. You know, you are what you
are and you should be proud of that. You know, small things are perfectly
formed, and, you know, for lots of reasons, you're very lucky to be small.
But, you know, it's also a question of wearing--I'll bet your suits, you know,
are probably quite dark and then you wear a bright colored shirt underneath to
cheer it up. Yeah?

GROSS: OK. I think you got my MO. Yeah.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: OK. So, you know, it's much better to wear one color and
have all the colors emerging into each other, because then that, again, will
elongate your height. You don't need to wear high heels to look taller.
There are all sorts of different tricks.

GROSS: My guests are Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, hosts of the
BBC show "What Not To Wear" and author of the book of the same name. More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, hosts of the
BBC series "What Not To Wear" and the authors of the book of the same name.

When you do makeovers of men, what are some of the typical problems you are up
against?

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Exactly the same as women, but I think the most prevalent
one is the beer gut, the big, fat stomach that is winched in with a very tight
belt and then encased in a pair of pleat-fronted trousers, which are also
tapered, or otherwise shorts which are of the same shape, and it's a question
of getting them into flat-fronted trousers with no pleats that are bootleg and
layering their top half to break up the expansive stomach that's there. But
men are exactly the same as women, and some of them even have breasts.

Ms. WOODALL: Yeah. And then you have to do the same principle. They have to
wear a two-button jacket and not a three- or four-button jacket. It's like a
woman wearing a princess collar neckline who's got big breasts, which just
makes up one huge breast, or breaking it down with a deep-V jacket. The same
applies to a man.

GROSS: So if a man has a big belly, is the appropriate place to put the waist
in the middle of that big belly or underneath the big belly.

Ms. WOODALL: It's really to give no sense of where the belly is is the best
solution. Because if you're doing a belt, you're winching underneath, and
then it just pours over. It's like a woman who's got a belly wearing too
tight a jeans. You see it anyway. And if you do it too high, it's like the
woman wearing the pleated trousers which are very high-waisted. So in a way,
you wear a trouser that fits smoothly, probably just under the belly, and then
over it is, as Susannah was saying, that layering where you might have a
T-shirt and then a jumper over, and you show neatly a bit of the T-shirt. So
you just break up and you deceive your eye as to where that belly is actually
getting biggest.

GROSS: Now do you think that people often get stuck on the look that they
wore when they were in their teens, the look that was popular when they were
teen-agers?

Ms. WOODALL: I think where people get stuck is the look in the decade they
felt happiest, OK. And I think a huge era of that is the sort of '60s woman,
and you see her today and she still has long, flowing hair. She might wear
the sort of makeup she wore then, but unfortunately, a few more wrinkles have
appeared. The garments might be quite flowing, but now she's got a bit of a
belly, and she should be trying to show off some kind of figure. So you
really find that, and when we go through, you know, a woman from 30 to 60,
you'll find that decade and we sort of pinpoint it, we say, `That's when you
felt happiest.' And in the last series, we had a woman, Sandy, and she had
really had a moment in the early '80s, and she hadn't left that moment. And,
you know, she could hardly walk through the door with the widths of her
shoulder pads. So it's kind of readdressing and saying, you know, the decade
we want to feel happiest in is the one we're living in today, if that's
possible.

GROSS: How did you start the show? You already knew each other and you were
friends?

Ms. WOODALL: We knew each other and we started a newspaper column in the
Daily Telegraph for seven years, talking honestly about fashion and what was
available. And then we did some satellite television for about three or four
years where we did about 200 shows, a budget of $500 a show; viewers, seven.
And then we had an Internet company. We had another book. And then we were
approached by the BBC to do this show about three years ago, and we're in our
third series, second book, and a few other things in the pipeline.

GROSS: Do you ever wish that you didn't care about how you look and you
didn't really care about your clothes in the way that some of the women who
you do on your show don't really care about how they look or don't really care
that much about clothes?

Ms. WOODALL: I think every woman cares about the way she looks, and she might
not admit it or she might be in denial or she might think there are more
important things in her life. I think there are very, very few women out
there who have the confidence in themselves not to care about the way they
look.

GROSS: Thank you so much for talking with us.

Ms. WOODALL: Well, it's been really great to talk to you, Terry.

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Yeah, really fantastic. Thank you.

Ms. WOODALL: And we have to do you, Terry. We have to come down--where are
you in Washington?

Ms. CONSTANTINE: Philadelphia.

GROSS: Philadelphia.

Ms. WOODALL: Philadelphia. We have to come down to Philadelphia on our next
trip and I think we need to have a little day out.

GROSS: Well, I'd enjoy it.

Ms. WOODALL: You say with trepidation. Yeah.

GROSS: Well, thank you again. Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine are
the hosts of the BBC's "What Not To Wear," which is also shown on BBC America.
Their book of the same name has been published in paperback. I spoke with
them last month.

I'm Terry Gross.
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