Heather holds an MFA in Acting from Yale School of Drama (2003), also training in Stanislavski's Method at the Actors Studio Drama School, NY (2000), performing professionally in New York Off Broadway and Regional stages in the US for 25years.
VOICE .... BREATH plus RESONANCE
Having studied Voice in great intensity at Yale Drama School and Actors Studio, Heather integrated Fitzmaurice Voicework into her Voice for Actors course while on the faculty at Oberlin College, returning to NY to train more intensively in Fitzmaurice Voicework(c) with the founder Catherine Fitzmaurice and Master Teachers Saul Kotzubei; Michael Morgan; Iilsa Pfifer; and Jeff Morison; earning Certification as Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework (2012). In 2014 Heather was invited to co-teach alongside Catherine Fitzmaurice, leading "Embodying Text" in the teacher training that year. This work was incorporated intricately into the Voice for Actors class Heather developed and taught at Oberlin, with a year as visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University, in addition to being invited to lead master classes in Voice for the MFA Acting students at the Cleveland Play House.
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From Embodied Performing Arts - Acting / Voice / Movement - to Therapy
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Heather holds profound respect for the Arts and the Theatre, and all it can do for collective and individual healing when done to its truest excellence. Acting work is the deep inquiry into both the actor - and the character - psyche, embodied metaphor and expression - with a lens for storytelling that holds responsibility to equitable, respectful representation and moving our society forward. Heather hopes to honor the full potential of these practices through teaching and creating art.
While teaching full-time in yoga studios, several devoted students asked Heather to create a yoga teacher training program for them, which she spent more than a year designing and conceptualizing as a community-center offering at the YMCA. The day before scheduled to sign the lease agreement and formally announce this program to the community, our national shut-down for COVID was announced, cancelling the program's physical space indefinitely. Two students determined to complete the training however necessary, and we found a way to do so virtually, at Edgewater Lake, or at Queen's lovely salon when COVID numbers were safe enough to meet indoors - we completed the entire program through 2020-2021, This boutique training became the Kalinanda 200HR YTT at the YOUARELOVE Yoga School, earning accreditation by Yoga Alliance. Heather is an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher and Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider.
Breath & Trauma
When we experience trauma, the body often holds its breath to prevent us from feeling fully. This is a survival mechanism built to protect us, and we can learn to thank our bodies for that care they offer. Equally, the nervous system can get stuck in triggered responses to traumatic circumstances, leaving us in a state of crisis, unable to function as we normally would. Gentle work to welcome that birth right of your free and resilient breath back can offer a direct embodied link to unsticking the trauma-response, restoring a balance with the parasympathetic rest/relax/restore/digest system, for ease and peace of mind. Advanced breath anatomy and experiential learning environment creates space for completely re-patterning your breath-body's habits of use in daily living.
The Spirit Rides on Breath
Voice is Action ~
Catherine Fitzmaurice
Using Your Voice is a Political Choice ~
Amanda Gorman
Accessing the Breath opens the channel to our emotional life, revealing the deepest internal wisdom and providing access to
an empowered and authentic Voice vibration.
Sharing your truth on Voice - while equally receiving others' and allowing yourself to be changed - is a singular event of mutuality, community, and presence.
My Teachers
I have had the incredible fortune of studying with world leaders in their fields and must express my profound gratitude to those whose guidance and wisdom live through me.
At Yale Drama: Evan Yiounoulis (Acting: the Cycle of Breath); Jessica Wolf (Alexander Technique); Wesley Fata (Movement and Dance); Walton Wilson and Catherine Fitzmaurice (Fitzmaurice Voicework), Grace Zandarsky (Fitzmaurice Restructuring); Walton Wilson and Andrea Harring (Linklater); Chris Bayes (Physical Comedy); Peter Francis James (Shakespeare), Pamela Prather, Jaqueline Farrington, and Beth McGee (Speech & Dialects- Knight/Thompson), Vicky Schaghoinan (Singing is Acting), and David Chambers (Solo Performance Character Workshop).
At the Actors Studio Drama School in New York 1998-99, I had incredible fortune of studying with first and second generation students of Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasburg, including Susan Aston (Meisner Repetition, Advanced Sensory Work, and Stanislavski System of Truthful Acting) - employing kinesthetic imagination and guided visualization in addition to a year with Tom Vasilliades (Alexander Technique).
Those combined four years of the intricate, subtle work with Alexander Technique, Psychological Authenticity in Acting Process, and Breath / Voice processes have been the basis upon which I have built an experiential pedagogy for actors and practitioners along with a neurologically based active learning pedagogy, to release one's inner wisdom and honor them in communication with others, toward a healthier more authentic Presence and Expression in oneSelf.
In 2011-12, while teaching Voice for Actors in higher education, I earned Certification as Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework from Founder, Catherine Fitzmaurice and then-Director of the Instistute Saul Kotzubei, along with Master Teachers Illsa Pfeifer, Michael Morgan, and Jeff Morrison. I had the privilege of being invited to co-teach Text Week alongside Catherine Fitzmaurice a week of training new teachers in the work at the 2014 International Fitzmaurice Voicework Teacher Certification Program (Subud Studios, NY).
Having incorporated yogic philosophy and embodied practices into my approach to teaching Voicework for over ten years in Acting programs of Higher Education, I took a year off teaching to focus on my own yogic process and turn toward yoga studio spaces for my teaching - finding connection with the Jivamukti Yoga lineage through Marni Task's trainings led me to attend the Omega Institute Immersion with founders of Jivamukti Yoga, Sharron Gannon & David Life, along with Master Sutras Teacher Ruth Lauer Manenti (Omega Institute, NY, 2018).
I am grateful for the courageous and brilliant individuals I have had the privilege of learning from and collaborating with in higher education, yoga studios, community centers, and in passing moments of everyday life, as we work collectively toward an elevated consciousness and just society.
In Acting process classes, I created space for consent-forward practices, building a vocabulary of physical and psychological safety in performance, centering students' agency throughout a performance, even in choosing roles through which they wished to express. Over time, particularly since Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and the Times Up Movements, a new movement in performing arts called Intimacy Direction answered this very need. I had been working alone on this previously, and now a whole community and codified language for it was there to support what I'd been trying to create.
Intimacy Direction / Coaching is not just for sexual intimacy scenes, as the name might suggest (or as public perception may lend one to believe). It is a practice of intentionally centering the agency and enthusiastic consent of the actor, particularly sensitizing to those who are marginalized and experience systemic harms in society and/or in the rehearsal space - and may be playing characters who endure systemic trauma within the story itself. It's a practice of ensuring individuals have the right to choose how their bodies, their identities, and even other vulnerable beings - are portrayed or exploited in the telling of the story with shared respect, choice, and sensitivity. As a teacher and artist, I'm so grateful to this growing movement and ongoing trainings, such a foundation and profound affirmation of what so many of us were trying to shift in the industry for so long.
In addition to also having a solo private practice as a trauma therapist, I now teach Acting / Voice / Movement along with Integrated Wellness for Artists and Arts Trainings, incorporating healthy prevention strategies, ethical boundaries, consent-forward practices, yoga and meditation to Artists of all disciplines.
Hello, and thanks for visiting!
for
Acting/Voice/Movement,
Integrated Somatic Coaching
& Yoga:
Please reach out via the messenger icon bottom of this page, to email. I do not list my email or phone publicly.
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Please note,
I am NOT accepting new clients for therapy (EMDR) at this time.