PETRINA’S INFLUENCES & INSPIRATIONS

This phrase changed my life. It was said to me in an email after I’d taken a 5 day intensive Fitzmaurice workshop in New York in 2015. I was considering taking my MFA in Voice Studies or pursuing my certification in the Fitzmaurice Voicework ® Method. So I decided to ask Catherine which path I should take and this is what she said to me. It struck me because it resonated with something quite deep inside. Nobody has ever told me to follow my heart or my curiosities. Just this word was enough to get me excited! I’m curious! Very curious! Especially about voice! 

On hindsight, this was what I had been doing in my 20 years of working with and investigating my voice in all the roles I had found myself in. Whether on stage as an actress singing Stephen Sondheim’s bullet train of a song “Not Getting Married” in the musical Company or doing voice-overs for commercials where I have to be an IKEA arm-chair, I always had to stay curious about what my voice was doing and why I couldn’t get it to do certain things. 

My 20 years being a Voice-Actor/Director has also taught me how to stay present when having to perform live with no preparation. Most of the time we read scripts we receive on the day and are working under ‘stressful’ conditions with well-meaning producers and clients giving you contradictory directions all the time. How do you sound like you’re bathing in a tub of luxurious French Roses whilst standing in a windowless sound-proof box?

I’ve also learnt that BEING a great voice-actor/singer etc, or HAVING a great voice  doesn’t mean you know ANYTHING about the voice. Or know HOW to teach it. I learnt this the hard way. I started teaching voice and public speaking after years of being on radio and doing emceeing and hosting work. Sure, we can draw on our years of experience and wealth of knowledge being on the job, but TEACHING voice is a whole universe unto itself! The more I investigated and started to learn about the voice, the deeper I got and then I realised, I knew NOTHING! 

Then my hunger and desire to learn about the voice fuelled me to search the world for answers! That’s how I found SAUL KOTZUBEI who was my first Fitzmaurice teacher. In 2 hours, I experienced something profound and life-changing. He didn’t make me do very much apart from lying down, but I felt his presence in a very gentle and authentic way. I wasn’t able to articulate it then, but after 3 years of learning and being certified myself, I’ve come to learn that the voice is a very sensitive instrument. It is affected by our emotional state much more than we’d like. It’s also very affected by what people say about us or say to us. So as a general rule, I don’t ‘diagnose’ voices or tell people what’s wrong with their voice because I fundamentally don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with anyone’s voice. We’ve come to believe certain things about ourselves and our voices because of past traumas and comments from well-meaning teachers and loved ones that we hang on to for dear life!

Petrina Kow

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