A Matter of Life and Breath: The Fitzmaurice Voicework Teacher's Connection to Audience and Subject Matter

摘要

Fitzmaurice Voicework (FV) is a voice training technique used in undergraduate, graduate, and conservatory acting programs around the world. FV creates sustainable healthy, dynamic sound while allowing for flexibility and spontaneity in performance. Using modified yoga poses to release tension and allow free breath, combined with the deliberate engagement of the transversus abdominis muscle to provide vocal support, the technique allows clear communication during theatrical work. FV teacher certification requires teachers to embody the technique for students, which involves physically participating in exercises and practicing the technique while teaching.;Through survey questions, interviews with certified FV teachers, and my own field notes and journal entries as a certified teacher of FV, this project examines the efficacy and potential impact practicing FV while teaching has on the experience of teachers. Particular attention is paid to the teacher's perceived connection to audience and subject matter. Additional methodology applied arts based research in the forms of creative writing, sound design, and performance as means of analysis and as tools for disseminating my findings in the future.;The consensus among participating certified teachers was that effective teaching requires gaining and maintaining audience attention while sharing insight and understanding of subject matter. Further, participants agreed that, since teaching often takes place in classrooms where environmental, physical, and personal variables create chaotic circumstances, losing connection to audience and subject matter is common. FV offers a mechanism to provide connection to audience and text, and to enhance dynamic vocal range in order to communicate clearly in the face of apparent chaos.;The collected data show a perceived value by teachers practicing the technique, which includes the ability to communicate in all circumstances with dynamic vocal range in a healthy, sustainable way, while at the same time allowing an openness to student needs and interests and flexibility of style to allow for mutual discovery. The findings further suggest that FV's focus on breath and the release of vocal and emotional tension, enhanced teachers' personal experience and ability to be present with their audience, maintain connection to subject matter, and perform the necessary tasks of a reflective practitioner.