My approach in teaching

• Voice

My basis is the singing technique of western classical music, adapted into the work with the speaking voice. I have brought the approach and ideas of bel canto singing into the speaking voice with the aim to train a voice to be a healthy, sustainable and flexible instrument. 

My way of working with voice is based in the thought that the student and I work together towards the goal to get a healthy functional voice; to develop the skills that already exists and to find out what kind of obstacles – in body and mind - that limit the voice from its full potential. 

Voice work is not so complicated, and definitely not “mysterious”. It is in theory rather easy. After all, we breathe and speak daily without paying much attention to it. However, developing an awareness of the breathing and the voice and taking all this to a professional level is a work that demands some patience. 

I am convinced that the full potential of the voice will develop, regardless of what genre the voice will be used in, with a released body free from unwanted tensions. With full access to the body our natural free voice will work in an optimal way; and can be developed and trained to do the most amazing things. Based on this my teaching is very much focused on body awareness, movement and breathing. From there we work further with the voice and text and bring all of it together in the acting. As a general rule my teaching always goes: body ⇾ breathing ⇾ voice ⇾ text ⇾ acting. 

• Acting 

Acting is portraying a character as believable as possible – not to become the character.

The text is the base for all acting. It is in the text we can find out about the character; their goal and strive, their relation to the other characters. We find the acting cues and impulses in the text and not primarily in our own fantasies around the character. It is from the text we build the understanding of the characters and of the dramatic situation they exist in. 

Basing the acting in the text and the dramatic situation gives freedom for a bigger variation of possible characters to portray. This text-based approach is applicable for all kinds of acting; the speaking as well as the music-dramatic acting.