Speaking Voice 1

HB Studio offers both online classes and in-person classes at the Studio. Before your first class, please review the information outlined on the relevant page(s). Class titles below indicate which are running online vs. in person.

  • IN-PERSON CLASSES meet 1 day/week for the full 10-week term.
  • ONLINE CLASSES meet 1 day/week and are offered in 5-week Parts. Sign up for either Part A or Part B independently (5 weeks each), or join both for the full 10-week term. You may join Part B without taking Part A.

This class employs the destructuring and restructuring processes of Fitzmaurice Voicework® devised by Catherine Fitzmaurice.

Training in voice work begins with the cultivation of deep physical awareness. Specific attention will be given to how the body—bones, muscles, breath, and nervous system – relates to healthy vocal production and vocal freedom. Examine how it feels to stand on your feet. Learn about how you live in your body, how you relate to your head and neck and shoulders. Discover how this affects your use of voice and influences healthy vocal spontaneity and expressiveness. Develop curiosity about these sensations and the circumstances and habits that affect them. Work through specific exercises to develop a Level 1 vocal and creative warm up sequence that will become your ongoing practice. Through your warm up become used to the process of checking in: recognizing and allowing the physical/emotional moment you are in and the circumstances that attend it, experiencing the moment, and working from it. Develop a relationship with the habitual patterns that influence how you engage with yourself–your skeletal and muscular structures, autonomic nervous system, your breath and your voice. Develop spontaneity, learning what it feels like to give in to a physical experience. With curiosity, explore and experience rigidity in the body through the release of tension, breathing, and spontaneous truthful sound. Learn the basic anatomy that supports breathing, sound making, and articulation in speech. Throughout Level 1 you are asked to discover your own process and be with others in theirs, so together the group develops a sense of what it means to be heard, seen and understood.

Be advised that this Level requires time to master, and most actors will need a two- or three- term investment at Level 1 to develop awareness and become confident in these practices. All else in voice and speech work will build on this foundation.

SPEAKING VOICE 1 INSTRUCTORS
Craig Dolezel | Theresa McElwee | Ilse Pfeifer


Required for class: Yoga Mat (you must bring your own for in-person classes)
Recommended for class: Zafu, Yoga Block

Current and Upcoming