Contributed with gratitude by Third Year Student Emma Welch
TKS Director of Voice & Speech Matthew Dudley gives welcoming remarks at the 2019 Voice IV Sharing. Students left to right: Jonathan Cherr, Jack Kaplan, Ben Fievet, Mona Balgobin, Emma Welch (I’m hiding back there..) and George Mayer.
On the first day of Voice I (two long years ago, back when our hearts were frozen, our body “circles” were tight as f***, and our voices were minuscule), our very first assignment was to write “A Poem to Our Voice.”
The poems would be based on abstract drawings we’d made of our voice as we understood it at that point in time, and words that our classmates used to describe that image. Having just graduated from a very liberal arts college, I felt comfortable in the abstract and poetic nature of the task. And I proceeded to chunk out this piece of indulgent hogwash:
You are a Portuguese Man of War
Down there.
A contained water island is sad.
You could be radiating,
A vortex,
All the way down
It’s exciting?
Pressure
Pressure…
Pressure
Is like lava
All the way down
There.
You’re only using this much,
I stumbled upon this poem in my old notebooks the other day. Although, the wording and unnecessary poetic devices might sound like indulgent hogwash to me now, I was struck by this rediscovery. This piece of TK nostalgia symbolized the starting point of a maiden voyage that has sent me “down there,” deep inside of myself, to unlock a voice that is more powerful and more revealing than anything that has come out of me before. Yes, that is exciting, Emma, young Padawan.
That’s me doing my thing at the Voice IV Sharing while my RIVETED classmates look on…
Now, my readers, the staff at TK has asked me to write a blog piece “about the Voice IV Sharing.” I could walk you through what happened over the last two years in Voices I, II, III, IV and the culminating Voice IV Sharing to explain to you how my voice grew from a contained water island to this vibrational vortex of which I am very proud. But that would take away all of the mystery! And I can’t speak to everyone’s experience in Voice: past, present, or future. But what I can reveal, and guarantee you (and I know all of my classmates will attest) is:
Matthew Dudley is the Yoda you have always needed and taking Voice with him will change you as a human and actor and speaker for ETERNITY.
So I’ve decided to bookmark my experience in Voice at the Terry Knickerbocker Studio with another piece of indulgent hogwash: an Ode to our master in command, Matthew Dudley, using the words of the Voice IV students, and our memories and experiences over the last two years.
Matthew Dudley works with a Voice Student during class.
“Nothing is out of your reach”
said the charismatic genius
At all times, both
Wild and
Patient.
Our own Captain James T Kirk,
You made a universe in four walls:
Murky and mindful
Challenging yet exhilarating
Eye-opening while terrifying.
Vibrational magician,
You turned our jitters into pride
Our fear into accomplishment
Converted these greenhorns to acolytes.
We followed you, daring vagabond,
Into uncharted waters
Where a single word could reveal
deep personal experience,
Where panicked baboons
could bellow Shakespearean sonnets masterfully,
Where muddy depths could reveal the utmost clarity.
We were Stradivarius’ violins
With all the potential of a masterpiece
Already contained inside.
Reflected through pools of vibration,
You saw us
So we could learn to see ourselves.
A simple gift,
A true blue sigh of relief.
Now,
We are wailing
We are radiating
We are grateful.
