Diane Smith Sadak, Pennsylvania U.S.A. 2018
Diane Smith-Sadak has been a full-time tenured professor at Towson University in Maryland for the past 18 years. She has also taught in England, Australia, Russia, India, Italy, France, Korea and Greece where she has participated in InFoMaT for 4 years. In Korea, she was a visiting guest artist for a year at their national conservatory, where she taught voice, acting and directing. In France, she became an Associate Artist of the Roy Hart Company and Training Centre in 2008. An Equity Actor in the United States, she lived and performed on both the east and west coasts of the United States before having a family and devoting her time to teaching. Professor Smith-Sadak was also the Facilitator of the Working Group on Performance Studies for the International Federation of Teachers of Theatre for a number of years, which brought her all over the world and cumin in a book chapter in Ethnicity and Identity: Global Performance. Her areas of research have been extensive: work with Viewpoint and Suzuki training, a 3rd level Reiki practitioner, and a 200-hour Certified Vinyasa yoga instructor and a Zumba instructor. She trained as a vocal student with founding Roy Hart company member Richard Armstrong for nearly 12 years before becoming a member of the Roy Hart Company in France, and teaches Unchained Voice in numerous places throughout the US. She has a husband in the theatre, Barry K. Smith and two children in college, Noel and Sage. She lives on a small farmette in York, Pennsylvania.
Exploring the Unchained Voice
All sounds are beautiful sounds when they are voiced in their optimal aesthetic context.. Using the tools of the Centre du Theatre International de Roy Hart in Malerargues, France, this workshop will be taught an associate member of the company. It focuses on taking apart what is generally considered the "beautiful voice" (or "bel canto" voice) and encourages participants to extend themselves into new areas of using and developing vocal warmups, exercises and repertoire. We make sounds and sing in between the notes: sing into the cracks! Participants do not need to be singers, but unchained singing is considered to be a part of the whole voice of the actor on a daily basis. Using a piano, a piece of fruit and the actor's bodies and voices, we will unchain the daily parameters which hinder the actor's voice and encourage "singing into the cracks" "finding your peeps" and "finding your engines" as just a few of the exercises for opening the actor's voice to new possibilities. Our goal is for each workshop participant to locate sounds that s/he din’t even realize existed in their instrument. Participants should bring a short song verse in any language.