O keep squeezing drops of the sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body...
Hafiz
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body...
Hafiz
I have been teaching voice, body, breath and expression for more than 30 years.
My life's work has been in the arts.
My field has been the voice, which includes story, expression, language, and image.
The voice is deeply personal. It reveals. Whether the voice belongs to a seasoned actor,
a successful businesswoman, a politician, or a teenager, it tells a story of one's life.
The unfolding nature of each individual is my passion, led by the drive to wholeness and the power of
the unconscious. From the very early years of my teaching, I have believed the voice to be one of the
great means of the soul's expression, as is the body. They are not separate. In our living cells, in our breath,
in our skin and muscles and bones lie wisdom and knowing as deep as the earth.
I began in the theatre, with a 3-year training in theatre performance in Montreal. When I was in my final year,
I was invited to join Ann Skinner, Head of Voice Emerita at Canada's Stratford Festival, who was then
teaching at the National Theatre School. As an apprentice with Ann, I took classes in
Voice, Acting, Mask and Movement. In the second year of my apprenticeship, I began teaching
classes under her supervision, and when she left her position, I took over as Head of Voice.
I kept that position for the next five years, continuing to expand my education with voice, acting and text
workshops in Toronto, Massachusetts, Montreal and Vancouver. Since then, my teaching has taken me from
northern Canada to Ireland and Switzerland, with many stops in between. The teaching has taken many
forms, from the basics of voice for the actor to audition coaching, from Shakespeare to Shanley, and to the
exploration of voice as an expression of the soul.
More recently, I have begun to integrate deeper aspects of the voice, bringing in the psychological, mythical,
imaginative and deeply personal. Since September 2012 I have been in training as a Jungian analyst
in Switzerland, and have begun practising as a Diploma Candidate. The voice work has organically expanded to
include the psyche, the unconscious, dreams, and the process of individuation. In the classroom,
the studio, or the consulting room, my questions are: How does it feel in your body? What is the
image? What are your dreams telling you? What is yearning to be lived?