RECLAIM YOUR VOICE!

Early in 2013 the GAC commissioned a workshop with the Lessac Institute, specialists in Kinesensic Training, which took place in Cape Town, South Africa in February 2013. The Lessac Institute was founded by late Arthur Lessac, founding supporter of Global Arts Corps and father of our Artistic Director, Michael Lessac. Kinesensics is a creative approach to discovering your true voice in a holistic way, resulting in vocal power and improved expressiveness. It encourages and honours individual personality while providing clear, concrete and organic instruction that applies not only to performing artists, but anyone and everyone. Apart from the therapeutic benefits of Kinesensics, this valuable training tool can also assist anyone for whom English is a second or third language to reach certain levels of intelligibility without losing their beautiful accents and the natural musicality of their Mother Tongue.

Of the 17 participants at the SA Workshop three were from Northern Ireland/the North of Ireland, three from different regions within America and eleven from different language/cultural groups within South Africa. Following the 12 days in Cape Town, GAC was delighted to hear that one of the participants, a once quiet and reserved educator from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, had become the vocal chairperson of her local organizing committee. She and a fellow teacher now credit the workshop, saying “It really felt like we could hear our own voices for the first time. We will use this work in all the things we do. “

This aligns with the GAC’s aim at activating dialogue through collaborative theatre. By working with artists from both sides of the struggles within former conflict zones, the stories of nations in pain get voiced. To give someone a voice is to hand them recognition; to allow someone to speak is to say: You exist.

Teachers included Kinesensics Master Teacher Deb Kinghorn from the USA, Certified Trainer Gert Terny from Belgium, Certified Trainer Yvette Hardie from South Africa and Kinesensics Practitioner Robert Koen, also from South Africa.

I write for those people who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they are so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. – Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992)