Posted April 21, 2025

Behind the Scenes – Kalo Gow

Kalo, you’ve done innovative work that combines storytelling with unique voice and movement work. Can you tell us a little about your theatre practice?

I have an eclectic assortment of training and performance experience from classical to experimental theatre, as well as film training. I studied IMPRO with Keith Johnstone, and the improvisation techniques of Viola Spolin and Ruth Zaporah. My pedagogical base in movement includes Laban, Corporeal Mime and Neutral Mask, and even ballroom dance with Arthur Murray Dance Studios. I worked in collective creation with Jean-Claude van Itallie, experimental voice with The Roy Hart Theatre, and worked with Kristen Linklater of Shakespeare & Company, studied puppet/mask making with a member of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, worked in Grotowski technique with the Riolama Theatre-Dance Company, acting for camera with David Rotenberg, and collected master’s degrees and certifications along the way.

I have worked as a professional voice-over artist, actor, director, writer, dialogue coach, dialect coach, acting coach, movement coach and choreographer in theatre, film, television, and commercial media since 2000, and as an Intimacy Director & Coordinator (IC Certification Pending with SAG/AFTRA accredited IDC) since 2017. I have been fortunate to work with producers such as Mark Gordon, Roland Joffé, Hawk Koch, Michael Prupas, and Steward Harding; and theatre companies such as Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, Centaur Theatre, Black Theatre Workshop and Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montréal, Playwright’s Platform in Boston, and the Roy Hart Theatre in France.

Whether for professional organizations or academia, I approach directing or teaching acting from a holistic perspective, integrating both voice and movement. I try to help actors translate and apply a technique or exercise to their overall performance approach or a specific role. As a teacher, my quest is to encourage, awaken, and foster creativity and collaboration in a respectful, accessible, and welcoming environment. I believe in an approach to training that hones and fuses the actor’s expression of voice, body, action, and intention, which frees the actor in pursuing a clear and dynamic communication of drama to an audience.

You trained extensively at the Roy Hart Theatre Centre in France. What sets this training apart from other types of training?

“The voice is the muscle of the soul” is a quote by Roy Hart that I particularly like. Their techniques expand the range of expression through physical techniques for vocal development. The voice must be flexible and responsive in order to realize the rigorous demands of acting.

I studied and apprenticed with Ivan Midderigh for over a decade and studied with a number of original members of the RHT early in my career, such as Paul Silver, Clara Silber Harris, Jonathan Hart Makwaia, Marita Günther, Kaya Anderson, Saul Ryan, Carol Mendelsohn, Kevin Crawford, and Margaret Pikes.

My research on the RHT is published in a chapter in The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice by 24 Leading Teachers, Coaches and Directors by Applause Books, “Teaching the Totality of Self: The Roy Hart Theatre” with George Whiteside and Ivan Midderigh.

To paraphrase myself, their philosophy is that the human voice has a natural range of eight octaves. Now this is sound production, not bel canto singing, and includes everything from a squeak or pop to a growl or multi-tonal harmonics / polyphonic overtones. Basically, by exploring the cracks and crevices of the voice one also strengthens the central voice, allowing for more color, resonance, more possibilities for character interpretation.

I would describe a core belief is that the actor’s voice and body must be unbound from impediments such as habit and presupposition. Therefore, a workshop always begins in a loosening of the body with extensive warmups that focus on the breath before sound production is attempted. It is the most freeing work in which I ever participated. Their productions often have a vocal soundscape underneath text to enhance mood and expand storytelling. In their production of Moby Dick actors created the sounds of the ship at sea, the waves and storms, the whale… it was an immersive auditory and visual journey.

That is their work as I would describe it, constant experimentation to discover what is possible. When I interviewed Paul Silber, he said, “[If] you take no risk, you suffer no anxiety and you convey nothing…there’s no structure which can be guaranteed from one person to another. There’s basically only work: effort, trial, success, failure. That is the journey. There is no end.”

One aspect of your movement coaching practice centres on period movement and dance. What are some of the ways movement in other eras differs from movement in the 21st century?

I believe an actor should understand the epoch of a play and their character’s places within the society created by the playwright. I believe it is critical to understand the societal, political, and interpersonal issues within the story and apply that knowledge to character interpretation.

I find it is imperative to begin with costumes, especially anything restrictive or that shapes a silhouette like corseted waists and deep décolletage, or panniers (the French term for side hoops or false hips). With 18th century English menswear, for example, a formal suit coat was often made of stiff material and had a slim silhouette that would feel restrictive by our standards — arms were not meant to be raised above shoulder height.

As a movement coach, I begin with posture and then, depending on the director’s and costume designer’s visions, work with actors on basics such as walking, sitting, and gestural movements. Societal class is a key factor to how a character will carry themself; royalty and peasantry will move differently, their environments (a grand ball vs. a country fair) affecting their physical expression. Gender and movement can also be a consideration, especially if the show is breaking away from binary constrictions or re-interpreting / re-inventing a classic—movement can be used as a tool to enhance storytelling.

Is the scene a public display of power, or a private moment of grief? Is the character trying to flirt, or use wit as a verbal slap? Dance, fight choreography, physical comedy or prop manipulation, and other specifics to the show are tackled next. These are the externals that actors and directors need to consider along with vocal aspects such as dialects or resonant placement for a character.

Could you tell us about a favourite project: how it came about, what it was like, how it was received by the audience?

I suppose I should plug my own musical here! I wrote the libretto for Dark Nights: the musical and Yotam Baum wrote the music (that’s “n-i-g-h-t-s”—no “k” and no Batman). For nearly a decade I was Artistic and Executive Director of Belmont Children’s Theatre in Boston where I directed, produced and wrote over 25 one-act plays and musicals. Dark Nights is my first full-length musical for university- aged performers. [Dark Nights is a coming-of-age musical about a young woman who chooses to resist peer pressure to rise above socioeconomic challenges and reach for a promising future.] It had two developmental workshops in Quebec, and premiered at the University of New Orleans, under my direction, to sold-out audiences. UNO offers free tickets to all students, and as audience members they were thrilling—their reactions visceral. When the protagonist was devastated by a broken heart, one audience member proclaimed, “He’s not worth it, girl!” which was followed by more commiserating commentary. A group of students returned night after night and sang along, dancing in the aisles. I have never before, and never since, experienced such audience engagement. How can that not be my favourite project?