As part of my continuing research into vocal practices of professional actors, a trip to the Far East in 1981 provided me with opportunities both in Bali and in Japan to interview performers whose extreme use of the voice would seem to contradict many assumptions concerning vocal health presently held by voice specialists in the West. Two of the performers interviewed have subjected their voices to a lifetime of what we would regard as vocal abuse, and yet are still, in their sixties or seventies, functioning as active and highly respected members of their professions with relatively little diminution of their powers. Comparisons among vocal practices of Western and Eastern theatre forms are necessarily affected by the sharp contrasts which exist in some of the related aesthetic values. In the West, an open and clear tone is normally the ideal both in singing and speaking, with much more emphasis on vowel sounds (with their greater sonority) than on consonants. But consonants in kabuki, for example, are often given considerable stress as a means of expressing strong emotion. In order to compensate for the relative lack of loudness of these more constricted sounds, a greater breath pressure must be exerted against tightly tensed vocal chords; stridency and harshness are the inevitable result. Tension and harshness, anathemas to the Western speaker or singer, are highly prized in many Eastern theatre forms. In both kabuki and wayang kulit, one hears a cacophony of highly expressive noises: a squeezing-out and cracking of the tone at the top of a long, upward glide; moans; rough "vocal fry" effects; hoarse, husky, and breathy tones; high pitched barks; and deliberate exaggeration of register breaks. Performers playing demon characters vocalize at great volume and produce a variety of nonverbal sounds-growls, snorts, and