Catherine Fitzmaurice Technique
Voice Labs with Ilse Pfeifer

Fitzmaurice Voicework is a comprehensive approach to voice training that can include, as needed, work on breathing, resonance, speech, dialects, impromptu speaking, text, singing, and voice with movement. While the training is specific, it is also compatible with other approaches.

MAIN FEATURES
Physicality - we develop awareness of patterns of vocal effort through a series of gentle and/or rigorous exercises, accessing the body's own healing systems for deep release.

Breath - we explore the central role that breathing plays in both voice production and the imagination, encouraging whole body oxygenation without forcing the breath.

Vocal Quality - we cultivate the ability to accurately communicate our thoughts and feelings while meeting the demands of text, space, and the immediate moment, through both spontaneity and choice.

Practical Results - we reduce strain in the voice, increase vocal range and expressivity, make speech easy and clear, and communicate intention more effectively, allowing creativity to flow.

Vocal Rehabilitation - we can help to resolve many functional vocal difficulties.

Ilse Pfeifer is Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and has taught at the Actors Center, Gate Acting Conservatory, NYU Playwrights Horizons and as guest teacher at Eastern Connecticut State University, Fordham University, Eastern New Mexico University, University of New Mexico and Sioux Falls University. She has taught in Germany at the Freie Universitaet Berlin and Berlin School of Performing Arts. Ilse holds graduate diplomas from the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing in London. She received honors as a Pew Fellowship in the Arts Discipline Winner in Choreography and Dance - based Performing Art. Her work has been presented by Lincoln Center out - of - Doors Festival and PS 122 in NYC and Next Move Festival at Center, American Music Theater Festival, Movement Theater International, City Dances and PBS in Philadelphia. Catherine Fitzmaurice teaches voice and text to private clients in New York City, as well as around the United States and internationally. She has taught voice and text at Yale School of Drama, Harvard/A.R.T., the Juilliard School, NYU's Graduate Acting program, ACT, UCLA, USC, New York's Actors Center, London University, the Central School of Speech and Drama, in workshops and seminars, and in theatre and medical conference presentations for voice professionals. She is Professor of Theatre at the University of Delaware, where she teaches acting to undergraduates.

Catherine's article, "Breathing is Meaning," describing the origins and methods of her approach to voice training, is published by Applause Books in THE VOCAL VISION, ed. Marian Hampton, New York, 1997; her article, "Zeami Breathing," is published in the Internet Journal, "Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts," Vol. 1, #1, March 2000, and in "The Voice and Speech Review," Vol. #1, August 2000; and her article, "Structured Breathing," is published in the VASTA Newsletter, Spring 2003, Vol. 17, #1.