Welcome you with an open heart

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Hello! My name is Scott Ferrara, and I received my certification one year ago. Because of this, I still have the sensation of the Cert very much in my bones. It is with that vibration still very much intact that I want to welcome you with an open heart to the beginning of your Cert. May your days be full of curiosity and pleasure - mutual support and autonomy - breaking barriers and rest.

Enjoy the ride!

Scott

Cherish This Time

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Dear Cert 17

I am sending you lots of love from Aotearoa New Zealand.  You have chosen such a time to begin your training, but I think that the breadth and depth of all you will learn is more necessary now that ever before.  For myself, I feel that although I was learning ‘content’, my most valuable learning came as I examined/melted into my response to the material that we were offered, and what I learnt from my classmates and their responses.  I want to encourage you to cherish this time of learning, and attend closely to what comes up for you. Trust the process of the training, you are held throughout by the most intuitive and insightful hands.

Ngā mihi mahana

Perry  Cert 16

Perry  Cert 16

Welcome

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I imagine you did not picture yourselves beginning this journey online, but please know that you are supported and honored by a remarkable community of teachers, practitioners, and artists. This Certification Program will probably take your body, breath and voice to unimagined places as well! I hope to connect with each of you in some way, and at some point, but for now, I’m sending you a very loud and loving, "WELCOME!!"

~Andrea Odinov, Cert 5? ;-)

Sending a surprise breath

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Throughout this pandemic I've been challenging myself to look for the positives, and perhaps one positive you can take from this first summer of zoom certification is that you will now be far more prepared than many of us Trems were to teach via videoconference. I have so enjoyed the opportunity to have friends from far away places join me in my weekly classes that I'm considering continuing a regular zoom class even after I go back to teaching in person. So keep on the sunny side when you can - sending a surprise breath and fluffy sound, 

Christina Gardner, (Cert 16)

Welcome, Cert 17 class!

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You are beginning your training in a way I did not. Though the circumstances are very different now than they were in 2007, I can imagine that much of beginning this new journey feels the same: excitement, uncertainty, trepidation, wanting to make a good first impression, feeling both scared of and in awe of my instructors and classmates, and just general “first day jitters.” 

What I feel moved to tell you is that you are in the right place. And you are with the right people.

I belong to — and have joined, quit, and started — many groups.

And what I can tell you is that regardless of what is happening in the world or in myself, the Fitzmaurice Voicework community is the most consistently accepting, supportive, and healthily fluid organization and bunch of humans I have ever had the pleasure of being part of. 

Maybe it’s the destructuring; maybe it’s the encouragement to voice whatever is present fully and without apology; maybe we are all just a little weird.

I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter — this is an awesome group of humans.

There is little we can be certain of right now. 
But I can unequivocally assure you that you are in the right place.

Virtual hugs!
~Elizabeth

This Community Celebrates You

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This community celebrates where you are right now, what has led you to this place, and where your dreams and ideas take you. Perhaps this is something I'm trying to remind myself of in this moment, too...in a way. I'm a bit racked with guilt with all the pure goodness I have received over the years from this community, and the balance of being present with everyone. Recently, either due to COVID, or because life kind of swooped me up and rattled me, I've been struggling to find the space...and I have to remind myself that guilt doesn't operate here, and space is ALL we have.

I take much heart in knowing that the FV community isn't counting favors, it doesn't "audition" me, and it expects me to only be honest and curious. You are in a place of creative safety...forever. And everybody is rooting for you. And you will always be rooting for them, too. From wherever you are in the world. Everyday. Every single day. 

That's the gift. 

 I am already rooting for each of you. 

Rachel Hirshorn-Johnson (Cert 12)

Where I needed to be

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I was scared and excited - knowing absolutely that this is where I needed to be, that this was the work that called to me - but even so, I felt nervous and sort of insecure, because I was older than everyone in my group.  Also I was no longer an actor (hadn't been for years) and everyone else in my cert group was either teaching theatre or studying in theatre graduate programs, or working in theatre!  

 

Stacey

Start Close In

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Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take. 

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation. 

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple. 

To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another. 

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take. ~David Whyte, River Flow: New and Selected Poems

I recall my first and last day of training like this: 
first day: petrified with thrilling anticipation and hope for connection. 
last day: flowing, full and free from my dream of understanding voice in an embodied way and connection … oh so fully connected. 
If doing it again, i would come in with ease of knowing that i am coming into a tribe, a work, that understand and values love, ease, agency and creation. you are now a part of that tribe. welcome and i can’t wait to meet you. 

 Much love,

Traci

From My Heart

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From the bottom of my heart I welcome you one by one to our Trems-family and I am proud that you in this most difficult but transforming period of time are choosing to discover yourself through your voice and find your way to make a difference in this world.  Stay connected, stay grounded, I am so happy you want to make FV a part of your life.  It was one of my biggest eye-openers and since I certified I feel myself so much more present in this human experience.

Wishing you the same joy and thankfulness to discover.

Hilde (Cert 13, from Belgium)

 

On the outset of Certifying... 

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Dear Nascent TREMS - 

On my first day of Cert 11, in our first circle, Saul asked us to introduce ourselves: Say our name, where we are from and one thing that is true for us in the moment, physically. 

I was close to the end of the 18 in our circle to speak.  

As I began to introduce myself, I was interrupted by another classmate who loudly, enthusiastically wanted let me know she was from where I was from.  

 I stumbled. Confused. I didn't get to finish, my thoughts were interrupted, and I was working on actually listening to myself, as was asked.  And, after, I felt... uncared for, ignored, it felt like a microaggression, a tiny bullying. 

But, then, there someone else who was also feeling nervous and excited who unaware, impinged on my boundaries. She was trying to handle her own effervescent neurology... 

I could not have articulated any of those thoughts at that time.  I learned how to do that over the next 11 months. I became wildly more aware of my interior responses to things, to all of our responses to things, and how little it took to knock me off kilter. 

I grew, I shattered, I began a journey of changing many things and I found my voice. 
We are all so sensitive to so many things! 
In the 11 months, my Cert learned about boundaries for ourselves, and many important elements of self-care.  
These were not things I inherently understood were essential to good teaching. 

Now, I know better.  

Until I care for myself, I cannot fully show up as PRESENT for my students, whether they are public speakers, an individual recovering from COVID or mid-career actors in film and tv.  A teacher who is fully present is simply MUCH more effective, as a speaker, as a conveyor of ideas, as a human being modelling a well-regulated system, that can create greater coherence in the teacher’s audience.

IN this moment, we are separated. Connected by online technology but due to the necessity of the moment (COVID, locked borders, curfew due to civil unrest), I find that the same level of heightened self-care is called for. 

Without touch, shared space, without the basic elements of a human being in an ensemble, it's hard to feel connection and feel the ground beneath me.  

Since, in Fitzmaurice, we are encouraged to "teach what is in front of us,"  we get to practice this now, with these new environmental, social and physical elements in our environments.  I am sure the teachers of the Cert will incorporate these elements into the work, and I am honestly envious of a "study group" to help me navigate my neurological system to the series of shocks that we encounter daily.  

I loved my Cert, even though I struggled with health and job as we were present in class every day. I stay close to many in my Cert to this day and cherish the vulnerability and loss of ego that is involved in the process of certifying. 

Welcome to our TREM family!   

For your journey, I wish you deep dives, great awakenings, patience with your shatterings and full reign of your creative license.  

Until we hold space together once again,

A

Approach to Life

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I was Cert 5 or 6, and to my surprise, this approach to breath and voice has evolved into my approach to life.  Tools from cert continue to benefit me in mind, body and heart, and, like a great marriage, continue to evolve with me even though the fundamentals remain the same.  How many things can you say that about?  Of course it's tempting to wax poetically about how much I love our global family, but it's inevitable that others will do the same, so I'll leave it there for now.  I'm excited for you all, and send encouragement from Seattle!

Gin

A New Experience

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I can only imagine that it might be strange and destabilizing entering into a new experience and a new network virtually. Please know that there are many of us who have completed the certification thinking of you, and remembering fondly the experiences you are embarking on, and wondering with you what this new format and period of uncertainty in our world might add and change. While you can't study in the room together, you are now in a learning and breath space with a powerful global community. We're thinking of you and welcoming you.

Teresa Spencer

(Cert 16)