BRILLIANT
SELECTION: THE CATHERINE FITZMAURICE
INTERVIEW
By Eugene J.
Douglas
ACTING
NOW:
For those who
are unfamiliar with what you do, what is
Fitzmaurice Voicework? And, if that's too huge,
what is Destructuring? What is
Restructuring?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
I think that
I've always intended to teach people who wanted
to be professional actors. I started with young
actors in training at the Central School, where
I'd been taught, but I didn't find that they
were physically free enough to make the noises
that I thought the text was capable of drawing
out of them. Also, they were not thinking deeply
enough into what the text might imply. So, the
two things that I wanted to teach were freedom
and focus. I kind of came up with the weird name
of "Destructuring", which is taking away habit
and pattern, form and structure, from certain
behaviors. Then, I would re-inform that with
something that was both physically efficient and
penetrating. That became
"Restructuring".
ACTING
NOW:
Someone first
approaching the work of "Destructuring" would
come into the studio, look around and say,
"Okay, you're asking me to get into challenging
physical positions while I may be producing
sound, breath, or rudimentary text. Why?" Why is
that happening? And how is this
"Destructuring?"
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, the
positions that I use are specifically designed
to move the breath pattern into different areas
of the body. And, in doing so, they probably
also interrupt breath rhythm. So they're
changing patterns in any of four ways: size,
direction, placement, and rhythm.
Why do that?
Because people's breathings are so compromised.
What breath does is allow people to feel -- and
think, really. An inspiration is an idea and a
breath. So when the breathing itself is
compromised, inhibited, or interrupted in any
way, you don't get the expression
flowing.
ACTING
NOW:
What are the
obstacles to freedom of breath?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Muscle
tension, which is chronic, and habit. The two
things kind of intertwine, really. We make
decisions very early on to restrict the amount
of input from other people or the amount of
expression we allow.
ACTING
NOW:
Why?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Because it's
not social behavior, it's not allowed by
parents, by the world, by cultures of all kinds.
It simply is not done. So the body gets
compromised. One holds in order to not let
oneself cry. Or not let oneself hit. So all of
these impact not only the body but also the
breathing pattern.
ACTING
NOW:
So a person,
for their whole life, holds something in. They
may hold muscular tension in the intercostal
[the areas between the ribs] muscles. Or
maybe in their lower back. You're encouraging
people to get into physical positions for
"Destructuring" that forces them to break those
patterns of tension?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes.
ACTING
NOW:
And what are
the key positions?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well,
basically anything that impacts the breathing,
which is primarily the intercostals, both
external and internal: the abdomen, the throat,
the whole face and jaw. The pelvis, especially
the sacrum. Everywhere, actually. And when I
teach breathing, I point out that breathing is
not only air coming in and out of lungs, but it
is also an oxygenation of the whole body. So you
can get what I call a "global breath" where you
can perceive breath reflex flowing throughout
the body, beyond the torso. Into the fingers and
the toes and face.
ACTING
NOW:
If we defined
"Destructuring" as a way to encourage freedom in
the body by putting yourself in different
physical positions and integrating breath and
voice with that process, what do we say
"Restructuring" is?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
"Restructuring"
is the management of a breath pattern, which is
not dependent just on the need for oxygen, but
is an intended breath with the rhythm of
thought. The word "inspiration" -- I think,
maybe I said already -- means both "in breath
and idea". So that, instead of breathing in to
oxygenate myself and stay alive, I'm breathing
in because I have something that I want to
express to you.
ACTING
NOW:
So
"Destructuring" is encouraging the body to unite
with the voice and breath in these physical
positions, loosening and freeing
--
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
It's allowing
anything to happen. Anything that wants to
happen. It's creating chaos. It's throwing
people into the forest of Arden.
ACTING
NOW:
And
"Restructuring" is not about removing that sense
of freedom, but about how to maintain a sense of
full breath, or rib-swing, while all of that
freedom is happening?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes, yes,
yes. So that you're not controlling -- I don't
use the words "breath control" any longer, which
is what was told to me, but rather "breath
management". So, if I'm [she speaks in a
high-pitched, disturbed manner with short
intakes of air] kind of hysterical [she
returns to her normal voice] but I need to
express that and have my audience hear it, I can
have that breath pattern quite spontaneously,
perhaps, if I'm a really good actor. But, at the
same time, I can manage it so that I don't hurt
myself, I don't try to squeeze too much, or blow
too much, or injure the vocal cords in any way.
That allows me to decide how loud it needs to
be. So it's about choice, as well as
spontaneity. Both of those
things.
ACTING
NOW:
So, to break
it down: the freedom to have all of the emotions
and feelings, this is "Destructuring", and the
security in knowing that you've got a technique
to manage it, so that you can have that freedom,
that's "Restructuring"?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Exactly.
ACTING
NOW:
Is that why
you had to put these techniques together?
Because, on top of the freedom, there had to be
some way to manage the release, or else it would
just be [Interviewer makes wild, bouncing
sounds often made while
Destructuring]?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes, yes,
because when you are just taught [She
repeats the wild, bouncing sounds the
interviewer just made], people injure
themselves. Or they're not audible or clear. Or
they can only go [She makes the sounds
again] one way. So, I'm interested in
variety, but I'm also interested in brilliant
selection.
ACTING
NOW:
How long did
it take for you to develop this process -- which
is still developing? How long did it take you to
really develop these fundamental
ideas?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, I would
say the most fertile time was the five years I
spent [teaching at Oakland University's
Academy of Dramatic Art] in Michigan,
because nobody was overseeing what I did. (She
laughs.) There was nobody teaching any somatic
behaviors such as Alexander or Feldenkrais
training. There was a movement person who was
real hard-assed, [saying]: "Strong
movement! Muscle! Look good! Do it right! Be
powerful!" Very active! So my voice class became
the place where relaxation, reintegration, and
the letting go of the need to be "right" became
a pool, a safe place for that, as well as [a
place for] working on the voice. We
certainly worked with relaxation, but the
relaxation tools got deeper and deeper. And then
I did meditation, too. So I think the meditation
things that I did were as important as the
bodywork that we've talked about.
ACTING
NOW:
What is
preoccupying your mind right now, with regards
to voice? What are you thinking of as, "This is
my new challenge!"?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, I've
been working a lot with energy. Where I used to
use shiatsu and pressure, I now use a simple
touch and an energy relationship.
ACTING
NOW:
What do you
mean? You say you use a simple touch. You mean
you're actually getting hands on with the
actor?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes. For
instance, if I see the upper chest is tight, I
would go in there and maybe knock on it or press
it a little bit or try to open it up physically
-- like wrench it apart, in the most extreme
version. But that becomes unnecessary if you
just add some energy. The body brings its own
energy to the place and that energy kind of
heats up and moves tight muscles.
ACTING
NOW:
Are you
moving away from physical manipulation because
you believe that simply focusing the actor's
attention on those areas is enough? What brought
you to thinking about energy and light touch in
your work?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, you
see, like other people working with the body and
with somatic things and release, I began to see
stuff...(She starts to giggle) I'm not sure that
you really want to have this paragraph
in...
ACTING
NOW:
This is JUST
what I want. Keep going.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, I would
see someone doing my work and as they began to
release, as the breath focused or changed, it
would appear to me that this body was maybe
giving off heat. That's what I thought, at first
-- and it probably was! It was heating up, it
was energizing itself, it was exercising
itself.
Now you know
if you look at the hood of a car or a hot road,
you can see little mirages, wiggles. I began to
see that coming off bodies. That interested me a
lot. So I started listening to, and reading
about, and talking to people about, energy. And
it interested me so much that I went to the
Barbara Brennan School of Healing, which has a
mission of health, not of arts. It has an arts
component, but what they talk about, and teach,
is chakras and what they call "Levels of the
Energetic Field". Some of it goes way, way out
and is entirely unusable by me as a theatre
trainer. But some of it was very relevant and I
use quite a bit.
So there are
certain intuitions or other knowings that I'm
beginning to trust. And I'm looking at people
and touching them less, touching them
gentler.
ACTING
NOW:
Why more
gentle?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Because it's
less effort. And it's less invasive, too. It's
connecting the bodywork to the mind work. If
you're working all the time with the "substance
body" and saying, "You've got to do this
physically," the mind is very often someplace
else. It's disengaged. But when you're working
with energy, the mind is energy. So you are
focusing energy and therefore bridging --
through breath and energy -- what the material
body is to, if you like, the spiritual body. But
it doesn't have to be the spiritual body, it can
be the creative or intellectual person: the
mind, the brilliance: they're the same thing and
our culture divides them. The body is too often
objectified and I want to bring awareness into
the body -- what is called, in science,
proprioception. You can bring awareness into the
body, internally. Even into organs, into breath
flow. And then the ideas pop, one trusts
oneself, and the mind becomes free together with
the body.
ACTING
NOW:
You start to
trust your physical intuition.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes.
Yes.
ACTING
NOW:
In your VASTA
(Voice and Speech Trainers Association) bio, it
says that you're interested in the "healing
potential" of your work. What does that
mean?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Moving away
from the "healing as a healer" aspect, simply,
that I could bring what passed for a normal
voice into a kind of creative brilliance, where
that voice could really tackle difficult texts,
difficult spaces -- improve, literally. So, if
there was a ratio of improvement from a normal
voice to a really wonderfully, creatively used
voice, why not work with an injured or almost
dysfunctional voice and see, by using the same
techniques, whether one couldn't bring it to
normalcy? I've worked with people with spasmodic
dysphonia, people who've been diagnosed with
paralyzed vocal folds and brought them to normal
voice. So why not use these
techniques?
ACTING
NOW:
As you're
looking out at the field, what do you find to be
the future of vocal pedagogy? What is the future
of thinking about the voice, of using the voice?
Where are we going?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
I think that
it deserves to have much wider currency. I have
been privileged to teach in very highfalutin
conservatories like the Central School of Speech
and Drama, Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, and
so on. I also care very much to bring this work
into the liberal arts area. To give it to people
on the liberal arts level, to B.A.'s who may be
business majors or English majors or science
majors. To give it to all people as simply
information. It's information that very few
people have. Nobody knows how the voice works;
most people don't know that breath is involved
with voice!
To answer
your question, I see it as moving beyond
theatre. I've been encouraging people who've
trained with me to offer it as an alternative to
yoga, as an alternative to any of the bodyworks
which are current and are entering the
mainstream -- finally in this century -- which
used to be considered very weird. Alexander has
been accepted for a long time. Feldenkrais has
become acceptable. Now there are many such
somatic disciplines. I think that
[Fitzmaurice Voicework] really can stand
by itself because of the particular synthesis
that it is and because of its focus not only on
body, but on breath and managing that breath
into sound making.
ACTING
NOW:
Are we moving
away, in your opinion, from a "right way to
talk"? A Skinnerian [the work of Edith
Skinner] approach?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
I hope we
are. Yes.
ACTING
NOW:
But, as you
look around, is that what you're actually
seeing?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes, it is
what I'm seeing. It definitely is. I am not
looking for a "good sound". Most voice training
has always been about, "What sound are you
making? Make the Sound! Another Sound!" And
voice teachers are sensitive to sound and
they're listening to sound and they have good
intuitions.
But I'm more
interested in building the instrument and
learning to play it, letting the sound be the
result. If you're going always for results and
you don't care about how you get there or what
you get there with, you can injure
people.
ACTING
NOW:
What are some
of the biggest vocal challenges you hear from
most performers or people interested in doing
voice work?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Everybody, I
think, starts by thinking that the voice comes
from the neck, from the larynx. And, in a way,
it does, in the same way that music comes from
the piano. But it doesn't come from the piano
unless somebody goes over and plays it, right?
It's completely silent. The person who has to
climb inside me and play my larynx is my breath.
So, really, that's the mindset I have to change.
Let's do the necessary work with the breath and
the body and have you feel the voice, so that
you develop a kinesthetic relationship with your
voice, rather than an auditory
one.
ACTING
NOW:
That's
important for your work. It's not just a way of
knowing, you have to do it.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
You have to
do it. You can't write about it, or understand
it, without doing it.
ACTING
NOW:
I think
that's key for our readers, to know that they
really need to get into contact with someone
who's certified with your work, or that they
actually work with you, so that they can get a
real understanding of the specific technique, of
the DOING.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
It has to be.
To make sound is a physical, in the moment,
present occurrence. In order to understand what
I'm talking about you have to be willing to do
that.
ACTING
NOW:
You have to
be willing to experiment with the concept of
breath being the engine, with the concept of
breath exciting the vibrations in your
body.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
That's right,
yes. And the breath is also related to the idea,
it's the A-ha! It's the [She performs a
sudden, excited intake of air], "I've got
something to tell you!"
ACTING
NOW:
The
inspiration?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
The
inspiration, yes.
ACTING
NOW:
How long, in
your opinion, does it take someone to go from
the introduction of these ideas -- say in a
five-day workshop like the one you're teaching
at this university -- to the moment when they
"get it"? I know it varies.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
It totally
varies, yes. And, you see, in this workshop I've
got people who've worked with me for ten years
or more, as students. I've also got people who
don't have a clue what I'm doing. And the third
morning is always the crucial moment, the time
when people are actually beginning to let go. I
had people crying, I had people yelling, as they
released physical tension.
ACTING
NOW:
Why?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
It takes a
while to really believe that there is
permission. It takes a while for people to feel
safe with that permission. It takes a while for
the group to get to know one another, so it's
not just a function of who the teacher is. But
this is a very specialized situation, teaching a
voice workshop to adults --
ACTING
NOW:
All day
long.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
All day long,
yes. It's six hours, six-and-a-half hours, a
day. For five full days. And many of them are
voice teachers who didn't have the knowledge of
my work, but they've come to explore further.
They may have studied with some other kind of
system.
I hate the
whole idea of systems, which is why I resisted
writing and why I resisted giving [my
work] a name. I think I'm teaching Voice,
which is what other people are doing, but they
do it a different way and they call it This or
That. People that have studied with me asked me
to do the same, so I finally agreed to put my
name on it -- but it was for them, it wasn't for
me. It was to give them legitimacy and coherence
and a voice in the world: [She affects a
voice] "We're teaching THIS not That".
[Back to normal voice] I think all of
these systems, within the next generation or
two, will recombine, so that the field is just
Voice. It's just a Voice world.
ACTING
NOW:
What's your
advice to a student who is just getting
interested in your work, or in voice work
period?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, I would
advise them to touch base with all [of the
different methods] and choose what works
best for them. I think people have different
needs, have different bodies, have different
voices. Their voices are going to be used for
different things. So whatever works for them is
fine by me. But I still would like the
information that I offer about physical freedom
and the focus of breath management, I would like
those to be current and common knowledge. I
think that they're important.
ACTING
NOW:
Conceptual
ideas aside, how about some practical stuff for
our readers? Like, "Hey, make sure you're doing
this every day". Or, "Avoid this pitfall". Or
"Try this, because it took me ten years to pick
up on it".
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
I would say
that they have to listen in to themselves,
because they have to learn to say No and not
push themselves or force anything. Also, to
follow curiosity. Curiosity is desire of the
mind.
ACTING
NOW:
Would you say
that the best advice is to get fascinated with
something about voice and just follow
that?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Yes.
ACTING
NOW:
Your
fascination was with breath and with the body,
I'm assuming.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
I was totally
fascinated by breath, because I saw it as the
thing that was inhibited and caused inhibited
behaviors, vocal as well as physical.
[Breath is] life -- literally! If you
inhibit your breath, you inhibit your life! (She
laughs.) It's so delicious to me. And it is
still so delicious to me that I will just seek
out anything that has the word "Breath" in it.
(She laughs.)
ACTING
NOW:
Why has
breath been ignored for so long?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
People are
fascinated by the result of the breath, which is
the sound, because the sound is beautiful. The
sound makes you feel good, especially when
you're listening to it. It makes you feel good
when you're doing it, when you know how to do
it, when you're a good singer or speaker. It's
an art object, the voice. So people want to go
straight to that and they don't really want to
be bothered or take the time to learn the
process of how people achieve that
result.
I think the
process is interesting as human development,
whether you're trying to heal an injured voice
or give someone self-empowerment or become a
better actor. It doesn't matter if you don't
have the best voice in the world, that doesn't
stop you singing or speaking. You can still sing
or speak your joy. You can share. And the voice
is really about sharing. We're sharing space as
you listen to me and I'm speaking to you. We're
sharing the air, the always-interchangeable air.
And we're sharing vibrations. One can go so
mystical about it, but it's also an extremely
practical thing.
ACTING
NOW:
Final
thoughts or words to a young actor who might be
reading this? Or for someone whose interest is
just starting to get ignited about
voice?
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Well, I don't
know whether it's so anymore, but maybe ten or
more years ago, people were really dismissive of
voice. You know, you could be an actor but you
didn't have to have a voice, you didn't have to
train your voice.
What I'm
looking for is when the voice and the creative
juices flow together, so that an impulse can be
acted upon vocally, as well as physically. So
that the vocal behavior, the vocal gesture, is
as important and interesting as the physical or
psychological gesture. There is so much behavior
on stages nowadays where people are working to
"try to express themselves" and they're really
injuring their voices. They're hurting
themselves. And we're left with the sound of
this person "trying" and...
ACTING
NOW:
"Cannibalizing"
the voice.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Cannibalizing
is a great word! Cannibalizing themselves, in
trying to express something that could be so
easy and come from so deep and manifest so far,
if they allowed themselves to explore the
elements of breath management turning into sound
turning into the expression of an idea. It's
fun. (She giggles) It's such a huge field. It
incorporates so many different styles of
language and so many different behaviors:
psychological, physiological, mental, creative,
healing, presence. It's power. It's
fun.
ACTING
NOW:
Catherine
Fitzmaurice, a real pleasure.
CATHERINE
FITZMAURICE:
Thank you. It
was great fun.
Copyright
2004 Acting Now, LLC
FITZMAURICE
VOICEWORK is a Service Mark owned by Catherine
Fitzmaurice