‘The voice I like to live in’: An interview with impressionist Christina Bianco

Abstract

In response to Rosemary Coombe’s provocation ‘Who authors the celebrity?’, this interview with actor, singer and impressionist Christina Bianco considers the process, performance and cultural politics of vocal impressions as a vicarious form of popular entertainment. Responding to Mladen Dolar’s assertion that voice can be located at the juncture of subject and Other (2006: 102) the discussion considers the performer’s reflections on the relationship between her own voice and those she ‘lives in’ during performance, the tensions between visuality and vocality in the creation and reception of impressions and the influence of new creative technologies and changing social mores which are changing whose voice(s) may be authored – and by whom.