Art of noise

Where do our voices live? What will be the legacy of the human voice in a non-human future? These are just some of the big questions posed in The Talent. Neil Cooper talks to Deborah Pearson, one of the show’s creative team, about voiceover artistry, AI’s rise and trying to develop new work in lockdown an you hear me, Deborah?’ Deborah Pearson looks like she’s lip-syncing at the start of our conversation about The Talent, the Canadian writer/performer/director’s collaboration with Action Hero (aka artists Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse), which is part of the artist-focused Horizon Showcase. As is the way of things these days, Pearson and I are attempting to talk over Zoom.

As I shout into the silence, I’m conscious of sounding like Clem Fandango, one of the pompous hipsters directing arch thespian Steven Toast during the old luv’s voiceover gigs in TV sitcom, Toast Of London. This fits in all too well with The Talent’s focus on a voiceover artist taking direction for a variety of presentations in her recording-booth limbo.

‘I had this idea of how interesting it would be to see a show which is just a woman in a sound booth recording something,’ says Pearson, once the mute button has been dealt with. ‘But I discarded the idea because it didn’t sound like a show I would do. Then I was on tour with Action Hero, and I told them about it. They said how Gemma can do all of these voices they’d never found a showcase for, so it all suddenly clicked. Action Hero’s narrative dramaturgical style uses the debris of capitalist language, which I thought might be the perfect thing for the woman to be saying in the booth.’

With all three co-writing, Pearson and Stenhouse co-directing, and Paintin performing, development of The Talent coincided with lockdown. ‘The meaning of what we were working on started to change a lot,’ says Pearson. ‘It raised questions about the woman’s isolation in her booth.’ The increasingly all-pervasive influence of AI also left its mark. ‘AI had a minor key when we first started working on the show, but is definitely a major key now. Doing voiceovers is one of the fun jobs. But it is quite likely within five years that AI will be doing a lot of it.’

The voiceover artist is one of the acting world’s great secrets, as heard-but-not-seen performers give disembodied life to all manner of outlets, from radio ads to talking books and computer game characters. Indeed, Pearson herself leads a double life as a voiceover artist, performing under a nom de plume in between writing plays and performing her own solo shows ever since she co-founded acclaimed Edinburgh experimentation hothouse, Forest Fringe.

‘During the pandemic, I was shocked by the resilience of capitalism in these voiceovers, and its ability to keep going. For me, the piece is really about the legacy of the human voice under capitalism, as well as making us question what are all these recorded voices we’re leaving behind. But I also feel like there is a sense in which this is the experience of watching someone record a voiceover session that lasts until the end of humanity, and maybe after.’

The Talent, Summerhall, 22–27 August, 2.35pm.