KTS Webinar #34: Teaching Accessibly and Creatively

Saturday, August 28, 2021

9:00 am PDT / 12:00 pm EDT

To convert this meeting to your time zone, please visit: https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/

The 34th KTS Webinar is open for registration! Join KTS Teachers-in-Training Eric Armstrong and Elisa Gonzales, as well as Dr. Tracie Morris, as we discuss approaches to teaching accessibly and creatively on Saturday, August 28, 2021, at 9 AM PDT. Registration for this webinar will be $10 to cover hosting costs. This webinar will be recorded, so if you can’t attend live, you can still register and watch at your convenience.

In this panel discussion, we’ll consider pragmatic and ethical tools to incorporate speech work/voice work creatively and accessibly in a variety of higher education and conservatory settings.

We will bring a range of in-class and on-line educational experiences, coaching methods, and cultural perspectives. Our conversation will engage a range of challenges and opportunities to today’s applied vocal practice.

Registrants will receive Zoom link information 24 hours prior to the event. All registrants will also receive the recording and post-webinar survey after the meeting has ended and been processed.

Session Agreements:

• From Nicole Brewer’s “Anti-Racist Theatre”
  • Speak from the I
  • Take Care of Yourself
  • Speak and Listen in Draft
  • Respect the Agenda, but Hold it Lightly
  • All Truths are Valid
  • What is learned, leaves. What is shared, stays.

If you have any questions about this space, please contact ktswebinars@gmail.com.

Eric Armstrong (he/him) teaches voice, speech, accents, and text in the Acting program at York University in Toronto; he has taught full-time in universities for 25 years in the US and Canada. His professional practice focuses on accent coaching/design, with numerous credits on award-winning theatre, television and film productions, including designing the Belter accent for Prime Video’s “The Expanse.” He has presented frequently at the annual VASTA conference and published articles and reviews in the Voice and Speech Review. He was the co-host (with Phil Thompson) of “Glossonomia: Conversations on the Sounds of Speech.” His research interests lie in the pedagogy of accent training for diverse populations. He just completed a 1 year sabbatical, and is working on an Open Educational Resource (aka “book”) on using Wells’ Lexical Sets for Accents.

Elisa Gonzales (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Voice and Acting at UMass Amherst, where she teaches acting, voice, speech, and dialects. As a performer, Elisa’s work has been seen at the New York International Fringe Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Café, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, the La Jolla Playhouse, Arizona State University, and the Tempe History Museum. Elisa is a certified teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, and a candidate for certification in Knight-Thompson Speechwork. Elisa has published peer-reviewed articles in the Voice and Speech Review, and has regularly presented her scholarship at national and international conferences. Her creative activity and research focuses on embodied storytelling, with a specific focus on stories that live at the intersection of Latinx/Chicana identity, history, voice, and memory. Elisa holds a BFA in Acting from Emerson College and an MFA in Theatre Performance from Arizona State University. She is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, VASTA (Voice and Speech Trainers Association), and ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education).

Tracie Morris (she/her) is writer/editor of 8 books and is a poet, professor, performer, voice teacher and theorist. She holds an MFA in poetry from CUNY Hunter College, a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University, and studied British Acting technique at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Her most recent poetry collection is Hard Kore/Per-form: Poems of Mythos and Place, Joca Seria, 2017 (English with French translation). Tracie became an Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist in 2018; that year she also served as the 2018-2019 Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Fellow at Harvard University. Tracie was the inaugural Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry at The Iowa Writers Workshop for three semesters before joining the permanent faculty as their first African-American Professor of Poetry in Fall, 2020.

The $10 registration fee helps cover hosting costs.

All webinars are recorded, so if you can’t attend live, you can still register and watch at your convenience!

Once a month, every member of the KTS community is invited to connect, collaborate, and share all things KTS related.  If you have taken Experiencing Speech or have been introduced to fundamental Experiencing Speech practices, or if you are interested in this aspect of the work, this webinar is for you!  Your KTS questions, solutions, phobias, phenomena, details, observations, obsessions, and fancies are all invited to the conversation. Our aim for the Webinar Series is to keep us connected on a regular basis, sustain our KTS conversations, and strengthen our growing KTS community.

Our webinars were inspired by VASTA’s forum on “Things that Work.”

Wanna Lead a Webinar?

We welcome volunteer facilitators and lead presenters for our monthly webinars.  Is there a topic you would like to research and/or share your experience with? Would this be a useful line item on your CV?  Contact the KTS Webinar Series organizers Adi Cabral and Amani Dorn at ktswebinars@gmail.com to schedule you as a KTS webinar facilitator.