What does it mean to have a nonbinary voice? How do you navigate gender in a language that genders everything? These questions led me to sit down with Sergio Carazo Cardona, a nonbinary acting and voice teacher in Mexico City and designated Linklater teacher, for a conversation that explores voice, gender, and the complex realities of living authentically in one of the world's most contradictory cities for trans and nonbinary people.

Sergio's journey offers profound insights into how voice work intersects with language, culture, and personal identity. From navigating Spanish grammar to finding freedom through Linklater voice work, this conversation reveals the many ways we express and discover who we are through our voices.

Watch the Full Interview

Prefer to read? Keep scrolling for highlights from our conversation, including Sergio's perspective on natural voice, navigating Spanish pronouns, and advice for anyone exploring their nonbinary voice.

What Is Linklater Voice Work?

Sergio is a designated teacher of the Linklater method, a voice practice developed by Scottish voice teacher Kristin Linklater. Before the mid-20th century, voice training was heavily influenced by singing techniques, particularly Bel Canto, which often resulted in theatrical speech that sounded artificial and disconnected from authentic expression.

Linklater changed this by grounding voice work in anatomy and connecting it to the acting process. The practice focuses on freeing what Linklater called the "natural voice" which not a prescriptive ideal, but rather an unobstructed voice free from unnecessary tension.

As Sergio explains through a powerful demonstration with a coffee cup: when you hold the cup freely and tap it, it resonates clearly. When you grip it with tension, the sound becomes muffled and restricted. This is what happens to our voices when we hold tension in the larynx, tongue, jaw, and other parts of our vocal mechanism.

For Sergio, Linklater work became unexpectedly gender-affirming. While studying acting, they constantly received notes that their voice sounded "too feminine" or "too gay." However, in Linklater's class, they discovered a space where they could freely explore their voice without judgment, a rare experience that profoundly shaped their entire relationship with vocal expression.

Claiming the Word Trans

Sergio's relationship with the word "trans" has evolved significantly. They first heard the term "nonbinary" around age 30, just before the pandemic, and it immediately resonated with them. For years afterwards, they identified solely as nonbinary, questioning whether their experience was truly "trans enough" compared to their binary trans friends.

"I had this thing of, well, nonbinary is trans in theory, but is it really?" Sergio reflects. "I have a lot of trans binary friends, and I see their struggles, I see their fight, and sometimes it's like, but I don't do that. I don't feel that way. I don't move that way."

What changed? Graduate school. While pursuing a master's degree in theatre pedagogy, Sergio was compelled to confront profound questions about identity, teaching, and authenticity. The intensive process compressed years of self-reflection into months, leading to a crucial realization: "I think I do need to call myself trans because I have a lot of experiences that resonate with that journey."

Now, claiming the word "trans" feels politically important to Sergio. It's a way of acknowledging shared experiences and community, even when those experiences manifest differently for nonbinary people than for binary trans people.

Navigating Spanish as a Nonbinary Person

One of the most fascinating parts of our conversation centred on language. In English, the singular "they" has existed for centuries as a gender-neutral option. But in Spanish, where adjectives and articles are gendered, nonbinary people face unique challenges.

Sergio's solution? Creative navigation using neutral vocabulary that already exists in Spanish, combined with strategic use of the emerging "elle" pronoun (pronounced "EH-yay") when necessary.

The Challenge of Gendered Adjectives

In Spanish, you can't just say "I am happy." The adjective must be gendered: "Estoy contento" (masculine), "Estoy contenta" (feminine), or the newer "Estoy contente" (neutral). This affects every part of speech.

Sergio's approach involves using adjectives that are naturally gender-neutral in Spanish, like "feliz" (happy), which doesn't change based on gender. When writing their teaching materials, instead of "el profesor" (masculine teacher) or "la profesora" (feminine teacher), they use "la persona docente"—the teaching person.

"When I refer to myself, I very rarely use pronouns," Sergio explains. "I mean, I use 'I,' which is a pronoun, but gendered pronouns—I tend to avoid them by restructuring sentences."

The Politics of Asking

Interestingly, Sergio had to learn to ask for specific pronoun use. Initially, they told people, "Whatever you feel like, whatever you see today, you can call me that." The result? Everyone always used masculine pronouns, regardless of how Sergio presented.

"It was always he. No matter what I do," they say with a laugh. "So I started to subtract the options because I was like, yeah, you're respecting what I asked you to do, but it's always the same. This is not contributing to my growth as a person."

Now Sergio explicitly asks for "elle" pronouns in Spanish. And something unexpected happened: once they asked people to stop switching based on presentation, people started naturally varying their pronoun use in ways that felt more affirming. It required asserting boundaries to actually receive the flexibility they'd originally hoped for.

Gender Norms in Mexico City

Mexico City exists in a fascinating state of tension—progressive policies alongside alarming rates of violence against trans people. Sergio describes it as a "bubble" where cultural norms operate differently than in the rest of Mexico, yet danger and acceptance coexist in complex ways.

Shifting Landscapes

The changes in just five years have been remarkable. Sergio recalls their acting school education, where teachers explicitly told students, "I don't care what you do outside of the stage, but on the stage, I need to see a man. I need to see a woman."

The reasoning was practical. They were concerned with whether students could book jobs if they didn't conform to binary gender presentations. Five years later, the first trans woman graduated from that same school. She's now a major star in Mexican theatre.

This shift reflects broader cultural changes. Mexico's most conservative television network, which airs a show where the Virgin of Guadalupe performs miracles for troubled teenagers, recently had a trans woman win their celebrity reality show. Even mainstream corporations are adapting—not necessarily out of genuine support, but because they have no choice if they want to survive.

The Paradox of Progress

Yet this progress exists alongside serious danger. Mexico has some of the highest rates of violence against trans and queer people in the world, even while having progressive legal protections on paper.

Sergio recounts leaving a theatre production and arriving at a restaurant just after a trans woman in their group had been physically assaulted outside. "She was screaming, 'You hit me! You hit me!' And a lot of people came and defended her," Sergio remembers. "So you have the two things going on. People who get this is not right, and people who are doing it."

This dichotomy shapes daily life. Sergio can legally get a nonbinary ID, but doing so might risk their employment. They can present however they want in certain neighbourhoods, but must carefully assess safety in others. It's what Sergio calls "this place of indeterminism that we are experiencing."

Sergio's Relationship with Voice

For Sergio, voice work isn't about achieving a particular sound but about freedom and choice.

From Constraint to Liberation

During acting school, Sergio constantly received feedback about sounding "too feminine" or "too gay." The only place they felt free from this criticism was in their Linklater class, where the focus was on releasing tension rather than achieving a particular sound.

This experience fundamentally shaped Sergio's philosophy. They went through a period of thinking they needed to "do something" to make their voice sound nonbinary. But through their designation training, master's research, and work with binary trans clients, their perspective shifted completely.

"I am a nonbinary person. However I speak, it's a nonbinary voice," Sergio now believes.

Working with Trans Clients

This realization deepened through coaching trans actors. Sergio noticed a pattern: trans women clients would say, "I have to be vocally female," and trans men would worry that "my female voice is coming out."

Sergio's response challenged these assumptions. "You are a woman however you speak. So that is the voice of a woman," they told trans women clients. "Your voice is the voice of a man, however it sounds, however high-pitched, however soft, however whatever," they told trans men.

This creates what Sergio acknowledges is a "tightrope" to walk. They deeply understand why people pursue gender-affirming voice work—they themself asked for specific pronouns because it felt politically necessary and personally important. But simultaneously, they believe in a more expansive truth: women sound like everything. Men sound like everything. Nonbinary people sound like everything.

The Freedom to Choose

The resolution to this tension, for Sergio, lies in choice. Linklater work taught them that freedom means having options, such as the ability to access your full vocal range and then consciously choose what to do with it.

"I can open my voice. I can, if I want to cry, do it. I can high pitch and low pitch and move it. And I can not do that," Sergio explains. "I can restrain myself from doing that because it's not safe, because it's not pleasurable, because I don't like it, because I don't want to, because I don't feel like it right now with you or with her."

The key difference? "So I decide to restrain myself. But I have the option to open myself."

This philosophy extends to gender expression more broadly. Sergio doesn't have to perform in a specific way to be themself, but they also have the possibility of choosing expressions that feel important, enjoyable, or appropriate for different contexts, just as they might with clothes, hair, or makeup.

Cultural Icons and Gender Expression

An interesting dimension of our conversation explored how Mexican cultural icons have shaped gender norms differently than in North America.

While the United States had Marilyn Monroe embodying a specific type of femininity in the 1950s—high-pitched, giggly, playing dumb—Mexico's biggest star of that era was María Félix. She spoke in a deep, direct voice, raised her eyebrow at people, looked them up and down with confidence, and was considered by some to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

This created a different template for womanhood in Mexican culture, one where strength, directness, and even vocal depth could be considered quintessentially feminine. It's a reminder that gender norms vary significantly by culture, and that what's considered "masculine" or "feminine" is far more fluid than we often assume.

Advice for Exploring Your Nonbinary Voice

When I asked Sergio what advice they'd give to someone exploring their voice in relation to their nonbinary identity, their answer was simple but profound: Explore.

"I do think that however you sound, however you speak, however you voice, it's a manifestation of you," Sergio says. "All the possibilities of who you are are also in your voice, because it's you."

They reference their mentor, Tania González Jordan, who told their students, "You don't have a voice. You are a voice."

This reframes everything. Instead of thinking about "doing a voice" for different purposes, Sergio encourages people to recognize that it's the same voice—your voice—capable of all these different expressions.

"So to explore. Explore what you can say. Explore what you can express. Express what you want to say and express. Explore how you can say and express it—gender wise and otherwise."

The final piece of advice is perhaps the most moving: "Allow yourself to be touched by your own voice."

The Complexity of Representation

Our conversation touched on an important tension in voice work: the need for representation alongside individual freedom.

Sergio poses a challenging question: "How am I going to feel that my deep-sounding voice is the voice of a woman if no one else is doing that?"

They explain: "I need a trans woman on stage. I need a trans woman on the screen to sound like that. And I need my trans women friends and my trans women elder friends to sound like that to really understand that it's okay to sound like that."

This isn't about requiring anyone to sound a particular way. Rather, it's about the importance of diverse representation so that people can see their own possibilities reflected back to them. When the only trans women visible in media have done extensive voice training to achieve a specific sound, it reinforces the idea that this is what trans women "should" sound like.

Representation creates permission. And permission creates freedom.

Language and Identity

The interview revealed fascinating insights about how language shapes identity. In English, using the singular "they" feels relatively natural since it already existed for people of unknown gender. But in Spanish, the gender-neutral "elle" pronoun is a recent invention, making it feel unfamiliar even to nonbinary Spanish speakers themselves.

"It's so new that my body still doesn't recognize that word as referring to myself," Sergio admits. "So I've been pushing my teachers and some people I work with, like, call me elle. I do need it. It's political, and I do need it."

This is a reminder that claiming identity isn't always immediately comfortable. Sometimes it requires deliberate practice and political commitment to make new linguistic forms feel natural, both for ourselves and for our communities.

Conclusion

Sergio's story illuminates the complex intersections of voice, language, culture, and gender. From navigating Spanish grammar to finding freedom through Linklater work, from the tensions of Mexico City to the philosophy that "you are a voice," this conversation offers a rich exploration of what it means to be nonbinary in a deeply gendered world.

Perhaps the most powerful takeaway is this: voice work isn't about conforming to any particular standard or achieving a specific sound. It's about exploration, freedom, and having choices. It's about recognizing that however you sound right now, that's a valid expression of your gender. It's about developing the skills to access your full range, so you can consciously choose how you want to sound in different contexts.

As Sergio beautifully puts it: explore what you can say, explore how you can say it, and allow yourself to be touched by your own voice.

Want to connect with Sergio? Find them on Instagram @sergioelmusical and learn more about Linklater work in Spanish through Linklater Latinoamerica.

Want to explore your own nonbinary voice? Check out my course Mix & Match: Designing Your Nonbinary Voice, where I help you create a voice as unique as your gender.