Intellectual, Emotional, and Spiritual Approaches to the Fitzmaurice Voicework Focus Line

Abstract

ABSTRACT As Catherine Fitzmaurice describes it, “The ‘focus line’ (as a mental image only) […] extends from the dynamic action at the abdomen down and around the pelvis and up the spine into the head and out of the ‘third eye,’ so the attention is not on oneself, nor on the vocal tract, but on the point(s) of communication.” This article expands upon Fitzmaurice’s definition by providing practical approaches to the focus line in a creative context using three approaches: intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. The authors aim to demonstrate how the use of the focus line allows for truthful communication, compassionate connection, and cultural understanding in dynamic performance. In the intellectual approach, participants integrated well-established communication theory into an embodied experience that mirrored key aspects of the focus line. In the emotional approach, participants explored how text is affected by the flow of someone else’s focus line. In the spiritual approach, workshop participants explored—through storytelling and devising techniques—how the focus line gets us in touch with our ancestral and cultural roots and histories.