Samuel Silas Curry

Samuel Silas Curry (November 23, 1847 – December 24, 1921) was an American professor of elocution and vocal expression.

He was a teenager during the tumultuous years of the American Civil War, and experienced hardships when his family's farm was alternately appropriated by both the Union and Confederate armies.

He would work outdoors all day and study at night, reading late into the evenings by the light of the fireplace.

In the States he studied with Lewis B. Monroe, Alexander Melville Bell, and Steele MacKaye; he also spent two summers in Europe studying with Emil Behnke, Lennox Brown, Francesco Lamperti, and the famed François Joseph-Pierre Regnier, head of France's National School of Acting.

He was known to say that he “had essayed the systems of forty different teachers, and found them all lacking in different degrees.”[1] This realization led him to embark on his life's work—the establishment of a new method for teaching vocal expression.

[4] Curry “believed that his greatest contributions to students were in his ideas for encouraging positive attitudes toward life and his method for training the mind.

[7] Curry's method of teaching elocution (or what today we would call speech or public speaking) emphasized individuality, intellectual engagement, spontaneity, creativity, and rigorous technical training.

He developed a system that centered on the idea that all expression comes from within, and that vocal intonation, posture, and gesture cannot be dictated, but must happen naturally as a reaction to genuinely felt emotion.

[3] Curry “believed that his greatest contributions to students were in his ideas for encouraging positive attitudes toward life and his method for training the mind.

He wanted his students develop a way of thinking that ensured the words, when spoken, would have inner content” [5] Curry's rejection of the imitative method is evident in his writing: Action cannot be improved by one human being prescribing a gesture for another.

Students read literature and poetry to stimulate their minds and awaken their emotions, but they also obtained more traditional vocal and physical training, engaging in rigorous technical exercises.

Among them were Horace G. Rahskopf, Sara Stinchfield Hawk, Lee Emerson Bassett, Azubah Latham, and Gertrude Johnson.