Mouthing into the void: Can the prompter sing?

At once required to be clearly perceptible to the performer(s) and undetectable to the audience, the opera prompter’s voice occupies a liminal space – between public and private, voiced and unvoiced, present and absent. This text investigates how such a paradoxical position may assist in (re)constructing a trans* voice similarly marked by tensions around audibility, legibility and control. Written from the perspective of a transgender man and opera prompter, the text examines how the act of prompting – voicing discreetly, incorrectly and excessively – can offer a framework for rehearsing trans* embodiment and desire. Grounded in performance theory, queer phenomenology and the author’s own practice, the article traces how eroticism, failure and sonic leakage emerge as sites of resistance to normative vocal expectations. The prompter’s task of mouthing into the void becomes a metaphor for trans* vocal practice: collaborative, excessive, partial and always in transition. Rather than offering mastery or coherence, the prompter’s voice – like the trans* voice – is committed to ambiguity, misrecognition and affective intensity. This text proposes that by embracing the instability of voice, one might locate new forms of presence, intimacy and shared vulnerability. The prompter sings – not to be heard, but to be felt, misheard, needed and missed.