This 55-minute session reframes the Linklater Voice (LV) method to be more culturally inclusive, offering conceptual and practical shifts that honor diverse vocal histories and nervous-system realities. While honoring Linklater’s enduring legacy of embodiment and vocal freedom, this session offers updates to its delivery with culturally curious and nervous-system–informed approaches. We foreground culturally rooted vocal qualities (such as nasality) as legitimate timbres, not deficits, and offer concrete modifications to the method and to classroom language so trainers can meet diverse performers where they are. We will re-frame “why the voice doesn’t work” as the effect of systems, policies, and dominant cultural norms and offer language to take into account intersectionality and diverse identities when we talk about why the voice “does work”. This workshop also explores how culture shapes and informs both our voices and the emotions that they express, and provides a necessary intervention in how we, as trainers, think and talk about the connection between voice and emotion in non-essentialist, non-universalizing ways. Part talk, part practice, participants will gain conceptual tools and adaptable exercises to reduce shaming, expand access, and preserve Linklater’s aim of unlocking capacity through exploring one’s voice in relation to the larger world.

This panel is comprised of teachers who have trained MA/MFA candidates in a university setting or were themselves trained and received their MA/MFAs in Voice in Speech or leaders of a pedagogy that offers training resulting in a certification. Bringing together their expertise, we will discuss with the participants in the room, what an MFA in Voice and Speech could look like, what the relationship between an MFA and certification is in the hiring process, and ideas for the creation of other paths to training in and out of universities.

In this session, we will break down the nervous system response of “Fight, Flight, or Freeze” as it relates to the ubiquitous physiological symptoms performers experience in body and voice during auditions, rehearsals, and performances. Some somatic techniques, such as Fitzmaurice Voicework, address performance anxiety through working within the Sympathetic Nervous System. Other techniques, such as Restorative Yoga, address the same symptoms by activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System. Based off my own experiences as a performer, 500-hour Certified Yoga/Restorative Yoga Instructor, and mid-certification Fitzmaurice Voicework practitioner, this session will explore the potential of combining both SNS and PNS-stimulating somatic activities to create balance in the body as well as mitigate the effects of stage fright. Participants will be guided through both a restorative yoga practice and some basic Fitzmaurice Tremoring/Restructuring, hopefully leaving feeling balanced, alert, calm, and ready to perform.

Fitz-Miller: Blending Breath Across Fitzmaurice Voice and Miller Voice Method aims to bring a future lens to how we think about voice and speech training by bringing together two methodologies in a single workshop, wherein they are often taught separately. As VASTA enters its 40th year, we are keenly aware on the cost-prohibitive certification economics for voice-teacher training programs. As certified teachers of Fitzmaurice Voicework and Miller Voice Method, Matthew and Nick, respectively, aim to provide a comprehensive workshop that brings together De-structuring + Presence work from Fitzmaurice and “Active Breath” exercises of Miller Voice Method – to create a space where participants can have access to fundamentals from both practices, to be used in a forward-thinking, collaborative way into their practices.

We aim to answer a question for our future: How can voice training methodologies work together as opposed to being competing or siloed entities?

Our workshop is deeply rooted in bringing the values of both methodologies to the front of our workshop like a Venn diagram to allow participants to see where principles overlap, contrast, and can be used collaboratively in hopes of inspiring future teachings to be taught from multiple perspectives, while honoring the master technique teachers of our past, that allow us to be present and future-thinking.

What does it mean to become a changemaker in voice and speech training, and can certification teach you to be one?

This panel brings together two practitioners who arrived at the same questions from opposite directions. One built a career outside formal certification structures, grounding authority in artistic practice and direct pedagogy. The other pursued certification and is now completing doctoral work.

Together, we ask what certification actually confers: skill, credibility, access, or all three? And what does it cost–in time, money, artistic identity, and the freedom to challenge the field’s assumptions? We argue that the certification debate is not really about certificates. It is about who holds authority in the training room, who gets to define good practice, and whether our professional structures are building the next generation of changemakers or simply replicating existing hierarchies.

In the spirit of VASTA’s “Changemakers 40” theme, this conversation looks to the past to understand how credentialing cultures emerged, stands in the present to interrogate their effects, and asks what a more expansive, practitioner-led future might look like.

This workshop introduces the evolution of the vocal and body NRGs*, created by Arthur Lessac, focusing on their organic connection to early developmental movement and vocal patterns. * Ongoing research has revealed expansive ways to explore and integrate bodymind connection and voicing, so as to support a multi-lingual, multi-modal approach to communication. Participants are invited to explore, through play, how these developmental patterns intersect with Lessac Kinesensic vocal and body NRGs *. For participants, developmental patterns of movement and voice uncover both habitual or underexplored ways of moving and deepen awareness of the body and vocal NRGs *. This multi-modality offers an approach to Lessac Kinesensic bodyvoice training that is non-language specific. This workshop speaks to both the past, present and future of bodyvoice training and use. Arthur Lessac was a true pioneer in holistic approaches to somatic learning. Since his passing, Lessac Kinesensics has continued to evolve to center a more inclusive and expansive approach, that navigates the complexities of personal uniquenesses to further expand the use and application of the vocal and body NRGs* .

*Neural Regenerative Growth

*These fine motor speech and movement skills occur in conjunction with the maturation of the vocal apparatus and cognitive development in general. They normally emerge and ideally integrate throughout infancy.

This 55-minute workshop introduces Pre-Contact Intimacy, a consent-forward pedagogical framework that locates voice work before vocalization, in attention, breath, and relational awareness. Drawing on international teaching contexts, including work in the UAE and cross-cultural actor training environments, the session addresses how voice emerges under varying cultural expectations around proximity, expression, and safety.

Participants will engage in a series of structured exercises exploring eye contact, breath attunement, spatial awareness, and non-verbal impulse exchange, culminating in vocal expression that arises from negotiated presence rather than imposed technique. These practices draw on established traditions in voice and movement training while responding to contemporary needs for consent-based, culturally responsive pedagogy.

In alignment with Changemakers 40, this workshop honors past methodologies that recognize the body and breath as foundations of voice, situates itself in present conversations around intimacy, agency, and inclusion, and proposes a future in which voice training is grounded in explicit consent, adaptability, and relational awareness. Participants will leave with practical tools for fostering environments in which voice can emerge safely, ethically, and with agency across diverse training contexts.

We draw upon our embodied experience of the world—including the sensation of singing—to invent metaphors. But metaphors also contribute to framing our perception, and thus our embodied experience, of the world. This messy, circular, often ungovernable process lies at the heart of how we make sense of music (and everything else that surrounds us). At the same time, the sense we make of metaphors inevitably influences the actions we take to shape the material worlds we create, including our vocal apparatus and entire vocal body. In this way, all metaphors are ultimately better viewed as matterphor, a term coined by Lowell Duckert (2013), which reminds us to think of metaphors expansively and intermaterially, but never reductively. Voice is a fertile ground for considering metaphors’ multisensory dimensions: as we perceive and conceive of the voice, sensation is metaphorized and then naturalized through that metaphor’s use in pedagogy. And, given metaphor’s immense power in shaping the physical vocal apparatus, taking time to consider the metaphors we use as singers, teachers, audience members and critics may create space for new voices to emerge.

While much of voice and speech training has traditionally centered on preparing performers, many theatre students apply these skills far beyond stage and screen. In many undergraduate programs, voice teachers work with increasingly diverse student populations, including theatre minors, interdisciplinary majors, and students preparing for careers in fields such as business, education, law, and public service.

This panel brings together voice and speech practitioners who are adapting core training practices to meet these changing realities. Panelists will discuss how foundational tools of voice work—developed within actor training—can support broader communication needs in contemporary contexts such as public speaking, leadership, and professional communication. Presenters will share examples from undergraduate classrooms as well as applied work beyond the theatre, examining how voice training can support students as they prepare for a wide range of professional environments.

In keeping with the conference theme, Changemakers, the panel reflects on the past foundations of voice pedagogy, considers present shifts in student populations and communication demands, and explores how the field might continue to evolve. By examining how voice training can support participation in public and professional life beyond the theatre, this discussion invites practitioners to consider how our work may expand its relevance and impact in the years ahead.

Cross-disciplinary work and research has become more commonplace, however, I find that many coaches/teachers/voice practitioners still either only have a passing grasp of linguistics, or bristle at the thought. I am genuinely excited and giddy about phonetic transcription, so I want to share some of this joy!

As a voice/speech/accent coach and teacher who has no acting training, I have developed a knack for creating really unique classroom exercises, as I see accent coaching very differently from most of my peers. Colleagues and students have often commented on the practicality, rigor, and usefulness of these exercises, so I would love to share them with more of the VASTA world!

I have organized some of my common lesson plans/tidbits/exercises into which linguistic sub-field they fall into so that I can offer both a deeper dive into linguistics than most voice trainers have gotten before, and some practical tools they can take with them into their teaching.

What does it take to be a change-maker? Courage and collaboration.

If voice trainers are to be change-makers, as well as cultivate them, we have to practice getting brave in public and discover the intrinsic value of our own ideas. Fear and perfectionism cause the voice to contract: improvisation offers a pathway back to play, curiosity, and meaningful connection.

This 55-minute workshop invites voice and speech teachers to explore improvisation as a powerful tool for fostering spontaneity, presence, and bold expression. Participants will jump into a sequence of ensemble-based exercises designed to shift students from cerebral self-monitoring to impulsive being. Drawing on the game-based pedagogies of Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone, the workshop demonstrates how structured play can function as a “courage gym” for both teachers and students. These games enliven impulses, energize expressivity, and build trust through shared silliness and a spirit of “Yes, and.”

Central to this work is respect for others and the belief that teachers must model courageous participation themselves. Playing with students, rather than simply directing them, creates a collaborative container in which players get to discover the surprising, inspiring things that happen when we decide to commit to our impulses and work with what others are bringing to the table.

Participants will leave with a toolkit of adaptable exercises that cultivate engagement, ensemble connection, and the playful mindset that empowers students to become bold, creative change-makers.

A demonstration of evolving voice pedagogy with my current students, building on my 2012 dissertation research on Latino/a bilingual actors navigating the “natural,” “familiar,” and “cultural” in voice training. Since that research, my teaching has evolved to create more inclusive, culturally responsive approaches. In this session, we will focus on Kristin Linklater’s Vowel Tree/Resonance Ladder exercise, exploring how resonance, vowel, and consonant work can be adapted to honor the oral-aural sound formations of any non-native English speaker, regardless of their first language.

Students will participate in a live demonstration of the exercise and present a devised vocal performance emerging from their ongoing research, reflections, questions, and aspirations for the future of actor voice training. One of the great offerings of this session is the opportunity to hear directly from the next generation of actors, centering their perspectives, creativity, and voices. This aligns with the conference’s Changemakers theme, highlighting how young performers and their experiences can shape the evolution of voice pedagogy.

Structured as a demonstration and culminating with a 10 minute performance, we invite voice practitioners of all methodologies to witness and reflect on how foundational practices can evolve to meet the needs of diverse performers. Together, we aim to model a pedagogy that honors lineage while imagining a future of voice training that is equitable, responsive, and transformative.

This event provides a dedicated space for early career voice practitioners to explore and discuss the future of voice coaching, training, and research. Changes that are taking place, and need to take place. Through a facilitated discussion, participants will engage with key questions about the evolution of the profession, the role of emerging technologies, and the shifting landscape of vocal training. The session will be structured to encourage active participation, allowing attendees to voice their aspirations, concerns, and innovative ideas for the future of the field. The discussion may also include a panel of experienced voice professionals who will provide insight, share their career trajectories, and answer questions from participants. If possible, this session will be co-hosted with the Mentorship Committee to enhance opportunities for networking and support.

Focus on vitality of lullabies and other early music memories within the voice/text classroom. A brief history of the earliest recorded songs and importance of music-based memories linked with early phonemic acquisition/memory. The goal: to revisit the power of lullabies as a gateway to discuss language, music, and personal identity. Included: a group exploration of early song memory and beginning improv/composition of phrases of lullaby during the workshop. Discussion to include Prosody Awareness & opportunity of Calming the Nervous System within the classroom.

This work developed as an outgrowth of the Vocal Collage unit originally created by Sandy Shotwell. Then Dawn Mari McCaugherty shared the unit with Eric Armstrong who then shared the unit at VASTA 2003. It became a foundational aspect of my first semester of a 5 semester voice progression program I developed for a BFA/MFA program. Original assignment is to create a vocal collage that asks the student to explore their use of voice in various emotional or environmental circumstances with different people. The inclusion of simple lullabies incorporates an element of early music memory. Incorporating early singing memories as a part of our life fabric.

Merging Kristin Linklater, Maria Montessori, and Waldorf principles under the timely guidance of Rosina Lippi-Green’s innovative socio-linguistics, we propose a new literacy for arenas of performance and public speaking; literacy that must rely on oral as well as written traditions: an “intelligible eloquence” that proclaims the normalcy of difference, the innovation of the foreign language speaker, the originality of the individual, and the authenticity of a vital language, English, which is ever evolving, ever absorbing, and thrives on the balance and tension between older and newer aesthetics.

This workshop fits with the conference’s theme this year because Authentic Voice and Speech is breath based and gives readers exercises to explore their own voices. In the past a “standard” might be given to participants and students to a greater or lesser extent. This non IPA approach is less clinical and it is our hope that it provides a more humanized and embodied method for vocal transformation. We emphasize nuances and personal details more than analytical transcription. We have created a series of exercises that utilize what we have called the Written Journal and the Recorded Journal, making the exercises aural, physical, and vocal which will deepen readers’ connection to their own voice and invite vocal transformation.

How have our past experiences with disabled and neurodivergent voice users shaped current teaching/coaching practices, and how can they guide us toward a more inclusive future? This collaborative session invites voice and speech professionals to share case studies, experiences, and challenges in working with disabled and neurodivergent students, performers, and clients. Rather than focusing on ‘fixing’ voices, we will collectively explore practical strategies for adaptation, accessibility, and inclusive pedagogy.

This session will function as an interactive think tank where participants bring real-world scenarios and, through guided discussion, brainstorm solutions together. Attendees will:
• Share experiences where they adapted—or struggled to adapt—voice exercises for disabled and neurodivergent students, performers, and clients.
• Engage in collaborative problem-solving to generate creative, practical solutions.
• Identify common challenges and work towards developing adaptable teaching and coaching frameworks.
• Contribute to the early stages of creating VASTA disability guidelines and resources.

This session is a space for mutual learning and innovation, where no single approach is considered ‘ideal,’ but rather a diversity of solutions are explored. Our goal is to harness the collective expertise of the VASTA community to ensure we continue making change so all voices are heard, valued, and empowered.

The idea for this personal essay and short presentation stems from a transformative experience during a Shakespeare Intensive here in Hollywood several years after experiencing a sudden and tragic loss. I also reflect on my journey to teaching and how this experience, which I thought was just about gaining new skills, helped me break through some very stubborn personal and creative blocks.

Coincidentally, the teacher with whom I had such a profound experience was Tina Packer, who passed away earlier this year. I admittedly did not know her well, but her passing and the tributes to her I’ve seen brought me back to this memory’s significance.

In all honesty, lately I’ve felt the heaviness of the whole world in the classroom and in my students’ lives. I wonder what small moments from my class, if any, will stay with them. I feel like I’m not alone in this. In all honesty, what I’m most interested in is to make a little space for the messier, human side of why we voice folks do what we do and how we get here.

In this short presentation I reflect on how this moment influenced my journey to teaching and how, through breath, voice, and text, I began to unburden myself from the inertia of grief and move forward.

Utilizing Jack Halberstam’s paradigms of queer time and place, I argue that there is a logic to queerness that permeates all domains of life beyond the sexual. Queerness often means opting out of life narratives that heteronormativity tends to trace out for us. This inevitably means that queerness can and does impact interpretations of text and, more importantly, subtext. The outcomes of queer interpretation in the voice that performs stand to subvert expectations of style when approaching characters that are well-known from the heterosexual canon. Ultimately, this paper serves as a reminder of the voice teacher’s responsibility to mitigate bias when coaching queer artists and to remain equitable in their openness to receiving the stylistics of queer voices especially where you might not expect them.

This 55 minute workshop introduces performers to Vocal Combat Technique’s evidenced-informed systematic approach for creating sustainable, repeatable screams for stage, screen, and voiceover. Participants will explore a clear progression including targeted warm‑ups (SOVT, Laryngeal Height training), recovery strategies (such as Resets), and vocal‑mechanics exercises (pitch training for the scream effect, creating distortion sounds), before applying these techniques to develop their own healthy, sustainable scream. The session will conclude with application to both joyful (i.e., winning the lottery) and serious (i.e., jump scares or being set on fire) examples where a scream might be called for in performance.

Emphasize physiological understanding, efficient breath use, and strategies that reduce wear, fatigue, and long‑term vocal risk while meeting the artistic demands of high‑intensity performance.

Aligned with the conference theme Changemakers 40, this presentation highlights Vocal Combat Technique as an essential evolution in the Future of contemporary voice training. For decades, performers across mediums have been asked to “just go for it,” often without guidance on concrete steps for how to produce extreme sounds. Vocal Combat Technique disrupts this legacy by filling a critical gap in performer safety and vocal pedagogy. This workshop positions performers and educators as active agents in creating safer, more sustainable industry standards.
Emphasize physiological understanding, efficient breath use, and strategies that reduce wear, fatigue, and long‑term vocal risk while meeting the artistic demands of high‑intensity performance.

Aligned with the conference theme Changemakers 40, this presentation highlights VCT as an essential evolution in the Future of contemporary voice training. For decades, performers across mediums have been asked to “just go for it,” often without guidance on concrete steps for how to produce extreme sounds. VCT disrupts this legacy by filling a critical gap in performer safety and vocal pedagogy. This workshop positions performers and educators as active agents in creating safer, more sustainable industry standards.

Despite the ongoing decolonization efforts in higher education in South Africa, many embodied teaching methods in theatre and performance departments still generalize and overlook the specific socio-cultural contexts of Black African students. This workshop uses Lessac Kinesensics as a focal point for inquiry. Originally developed in an American context, Kinesensics raises important questions about how this approach applies to Black African bodies, which are influenced by unique socio-cultural factors.

The central inquiry is how to make Kinesensics more accessible to Black African students. This involves helping them connect their lived experiences to somatic learning in a more authentic way. By deepening our understanding of the Black African experience on a socio- cultural level, we can reimagine teaching methods. This paper suggests developing a communal language for teaching and learning choreography and vocality that integrates Lessac’s NRGs in ways that resonate with the principles and qualities of Black African performance.

This workshop utilises African childhood games as a nexus for the creation of choreography and vocality. These games serve as familiar entry points into the students’ embodied archives of movement, providing an organic way to generate choreographic and vocal ideas. The outcome of the workshops consists of expressions that felt natural to the students and reflected how their bodies instinctively move.

It is essential to bridge this gap between speaking memorized text and experiencing the same text as extemporaneous (unmemorized) in order to invigorate an embodied and inspired performance.

That seems self-evident. And yet there is no present technique on how to accomplish this task in the (large) marketplace of “performance technique.” No system to rely on the moment you receive your script. Until now.

The problem in one’s performance may not be technique, but in the way they memorize the text.

Memorization is not the precursor to your process, it is the process. The how is everything. Using emergent neuroscience and cognitive research, this workshop will illuminate the Text Transfusion process, relating to the text in an embodied, thorough, and organic way that mirrors human processing as opposed to rote memorization, which, of course, cannot.

The approach seeks to borrow from the past text based focus espoused by the master’s and combine it with today’s memory science and provide a way to integrate the process of memorization into the process of embodiment right from the start.

Statement pertaining to the theme of this year’s conference:

This workshop relies on the past in that it honors the Principles of Lessac Kinesensics as developed by its founder, Arthur Lessac, yet moves forward beyond his original voice text to include innovative strategies for inclusivity and diversity applied to a new target audience–those wishing to teach (facilitate) or acquire a General American accent without sacrificing their own individuality.

Description of the workshop:

This interactive workshop will introduce ways to assist clients/students in acquiring a General American accent without sacrificing their own individuality or idiosyncratic way of speaking English. Relying on the time-honored principles of Lessac Kinesensics, the new manual ‘Sensing Speech’, co-authored by Jonghee Shadix and Nancy Krebs, offers some fresh, innovative and inclusive strategies for L2 speakers to gain clarity, expressiveness, rhythm, prosody and other aspects of the spoken word found in GenAm. Main presenter Nancy Krebs will lead participants through some of the work sections and discuss with co-presenter Monica Blaze Leavitt how this approach has been successfully integrated into her private practice in NYC and how it might be utilized by those in attendance.