MY COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION
“Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded.
We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.”
- Robert Anton Wilson
We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.”
- Robert Anton Wilson
I open with this slightly audacious quote (I say audacious because words like ‘deranged’ and ‘sane’ carry their own weight) because it affirms to me that all of us, no matter who we are nor how evolved we believe ourselves to be, whether we are aware of it or not, bring the wholeness of our prior lived experience with us to any space and time we encounter.
“We are our Selves, because of our history.”
In contemporary Western society, our awareness of, and our ability to name and describe the diversity of human experience is increasing exponentially. In the realm of theatre, performance, and arts training, and my own specialisation and expertise of the human voice, we are concerned not only with artistic exploration, but also with empowering and releasing individual voices and narratives that seek, and oftentimes demand a space-time to be heard. Today, I seek people’s pronouns, modes of identification, and similar things which are in many ways inconsequential to the broader work, but are in greater ways the boundaries an individual has set, not out of apology, but out of a deep need to understand questions such as the following:
WHO IS THIS PERSON?
Sure, maybe.
WHO CAN THIS PERSON BE?
Yes? Or maybe, even
WHO IS THIS PERSON TRYING TO BE?
In my personal "perfect" space-time, my ideal world, where every voice has equal weight to be heard,
to be understood and discovered… this is a utopian space.
Were it real, it could hold all of us Safely, could hold all of us Respectfully, and could hold of all of us in times of both Strength and Vulnerability.
Were this Utopian space possible, our capacity for personal and communal discovery could be huge.
Sure, maybe.
WHO CAN THIS PERSON BE?
Yes? Or maybe, even
WHO IS THIS PERSON TRYING TO BE?
In my personal "perfect" space-time, my ideal world, where every voice has equal weight to be heard,
to be understood and discovered… this is a utopian space.
Were it real, it could hold all of us Safely, could hold all of us Respectfully, and could hold of all of us in times of both Strength and Vulnerability.
Were this Utopian space possible, our capacity for personal and communal discovery could be huge.
But the world we inhabit is not ideal, is not such a Utopia, and is, to my mind, rarely safe, and frequently not respectful of true strength, nor genuine vulnerability.
As such, Safety and Respect take primacy in my teaching spaces, always. Gentleness in exploring the limits and capabilities of our strength, and the perilousness of our vulnerability is always an aspiration. BUT as we are training performers, artists, and communicators who are tasked with telling stories outside of safety and respect, holding our societies’ ideals and treasured fallacies to account, we must allow for and prepare ourselves for Roughness. Hence Resilience is also a primary goal and aspiration in my teaching.
As we, as artistic practitioners navigate these lofty aims in an educational landscape, it is evident that our approach must acknowledge the diverse human beings and the unique experiential backgrounds they each bring with them in their artistic training. In our learning environment, I believe that diversity is the driving force that propels us toward a more equitable space where students of all identities, irrespective of their cultural heritage, sexual orientation, gender identity, neurodiversity, or anything else which our human societies use to separate an individual from Connection and Inclusion, find a welcoming home for their aspirations and talents.
Stories happen where experience happens, and only voices which know themselves can speak for themselves; can tell the stories of their experience, or aspire to understand and tell the stories of others.
Growing up in Cameraygal country, Sydney, Australia, provided me with a unique perspective: one rooted in privilege. While privilege isn't a unique perspective whatsoever, as a lens through which to view the world, it was constantly challenged by the choices I made and the worlds I found myself in. From my safe home environment, I found myself travelling to schools further and further afield for new opportunities, each time finding myself surrounded by people, cultures, and stories that were completely foreign – refugees, new migrants and English language learners, special needs children, and families of origin completely different to mine. By the time I attended acting school, in far-flung Western Sydney – a region known as a melting pot of cultures, communities, and backgrounds, I was thoroughly obsessed with understanding and investigating voices, accents, languages, and the sounds we are capable of making, and the mysteries of how these patterns can magically divide or unite us.
When I came to study voice formally, this passion only deepened. In my first Graduate Diploma at NIDA, I worked directly with Indigenous actors in training like Shari Sebbens, Miranda Tapsell, and Travis Cardona, all of whom continue to contribute amazing perspectives and work to the cultural life of Australia, and our understanding of the Indigenous Australian experience. They have also gone on to be vocal about how actor training in institutions like NIDA needs to change. I witnessed several specific instances during their training which these artists subsequently have spoken to, but I lacked the language then to understand why what I was seeing troubled me. A white guy’s discomfort alone can’t build a future, but a white guy’s embrace of and centring of a blak kid’s discomfort can empower that blak kid, so long as their story is always at the centre. As the white guy, I'm discovering the beauty in stepping back and listening, in centring (for my own folks) the grace of the other half of expression, namely impression AKA listening.
With this history in mind, when Shari Sebbens invited me in 2023 to work with Indigenous actor Angeline Penrith on her voice and dialect for an Indigenous led production called Blaque Showgirls, I resolved to approach this work as a listener. As Angeline and I had never met, and she was very nervous about her task, I was very conscious of entering a one-on-one space with her as a white man purporting to bear authority over her voice. Through this tentative process, as we both became more comfortable with each other, I was able to hear what she needed that was different to non-Indigenous students I have taught. Our work became much more conversational, experiential, person-to-person, and I was able to prepare specific resources for her that gave her confidence in her task.
As an arts practitioner and pedagogue based in so-called Australia, my experience of other cultures and particularly in North America, has shown that in this country we (and by “we” I mean white artists and pedagogues specifically in this application, but I also mean all white people generally in this country) are, by and large children when it comes to speaking about race, indigeneity, gender, diversity, and trauma in an artistic setting. Most of us white Australians do everything we can to avoid discussing the obvious and evident in our society. To the point of denying or supressing discussion about the realities of our colonial history.
Therefore, when I was a visiting scholar at UNC Chapel Hill, working closely with actors Shanel Leonard and April Mae Davis in 2017, the experience of being a white Australian in the American South, working with and teaching people of colour in contexts in which their lived identities and experience were raised and spoken of and directly addressed was very unfamiliar. Moreover, both these actors were being asked to speak in dialects which people who looked like them historically would not have spoken (RP and Cornish).
This experience only served to cement my commitment to a decolonial approach to voice and dialect teaching, which first and foremost begins with teaching and examining the sounds of human speech free from valued language and, fundamentally, replacing judgement with curiosity. The more sounds we learn to hear, the more we learn to hear sounds.
BUT coupled with this must be the acknowledgement that the way we communicate is intimately tied to our identity and culture. As such I take a very individual approach to the teaching and learning of accent and dialect. While I begin with teaching how accents and dialects as a whole work and function in human experience, society, and crucially in the context of our work as performers, from there, one size never fits all.
Furthermore, ignorance and misunderstanding thrives in the dark. As such every class I teach on dialect begins with a discussion of what sounds and words and phrases the students have heard or noticed while out in the world – in strangers, in family, in themselves, on television, etc. Sometimes one doesn’t know what is okay to ask unless one has a frame of reference. A space where awkward questions are permitted, crucially, without any agenda, has proved the most fruitful, educative, and emancipatory for all of my students regardless of their own individual background or identity.
My position as voice and dialect teacher for ECMT in Adelaide introduced me to other needs, diverse stories and experiences, such as my first time teaching trans and gender diverse students. As a faculty, spearheaded by our course leader George Torbay, we became the first course at the university to ask for student’s pronouns at the beginning of each year, and to advocate for accommodations for campus facilities where this was required. We encouraged discussions and advocacy from the students about their needs and how we could maintain an equitable and inclusive environment for all of the student body. In setting assessments for students, I have increasingly felt that requiring them to find scripts for characters that rigidly match their gender is largely unnecessary – except where future casting opportunities in a far less accommodating industry may be a consideration. I’m always led by the students in this regard.
In terms of the texts I bring to class to apply our work to, I do my best to explore classical texts with an eye to the continuity of form in contemporary works – such as examining Shakespearean sonnets alongside contemporary poets of diverse lived experiences and Indigenous writers such as Nola Gregory, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Imtiaz Dharker, Gwen Benaway, and Christopher Soto.
Two assessment tasks which I employ are built upon DEI principles, especially the desire for a decolonial approach to the human voice, as well as my oft stated ethos that curiosity is the antidote to judgement. The first is the Creation Story exercise, which necessitates a deep research and connection to the chosen story to be told, and then creatively designing a respectful and embodied telling of it.
The second is what I have called the Foreign Language Task and is an advanced, shared research project which culminates in the performance of a dramatic scene in a foreign language, not owned by either of the performers. Through deep research, respectful endeavour, and forensic-level examination of the sounds, words, and structures of a language not their own, students discover, usually without planning to, how detailed their own language is and can be. Crucially from my perspective as a Voice teacher, they are forced to find the underlying truth of information which is not intellectual. An audience who does not understand the language has no way to understand the “sense” of what you are saying, but they can, if what we are fond of calling “truth” is present, be told a story. These initiatives collectively contribute to a learning environment that celebrates diversity, accommodates individual needs and interests, foster community engagement, and encourage students to embrace a variety of perspectives and experiences.
In the future, I am committed to continuing my efforts in fostering an inclusive and equitable environment in both my teaching and scholarly pursuits. A part of my teaching process includes (where possible) a final reflective questionnaire for each student which is firstly for them to reflect on their experience on their own terms, and secondly to hold themselves accountable for their own progress. It is also for me to assess, if required, the integration of their learning, but crucially it is designed to allow me to continue to refine and improve my teaching practices through giving my students a place to reflect on their experiences and expectations in their own words, so I never stop listening, and continue to be held accountable myself.
As such, Safety and Respect take primacy in my teaching spaces, always. Gentleness in exploring the limits and capabilities of our strength, and the perilousness of our vulnerability is always an aspiration. BUT as we are training performers, artists, and communicators who are tasked with telling stories outside of safety and respect, holding our societies’ ideals and treasured fallacies to account, we must allow for and prepare ourselves for Roughness. Hence Resilience is also a primary goal and aspiration in my teaching.
As we, as artistic practitioners navigate these lofty aims in an educational landscape, it is evident that our approach must acknowledge the diverse human beings and the unique experiential backgrounds they each bring with them in their artistic training. In our learning environment, I believe that diversity is the driving force that propels us toward a more equitable space where students of all identities, irrespective of their cultural heritage, sexual orientation, gender identity, neurodiversity, or anything else which our human societies use to separate an individual from Connection and Inclusion, find a welcoming home for their aspirations and talents.
Stories happen where experience happens, and only voices which know themselves can speak for themselves; can tell the stories of their experience, or aspire to understand and tell the stories of others.
Growing up in Cameraygal country, Sydney, Australia, provided me with a unique perspective: one rooted in privilege. While privilege isn't a unique perspective whatsoever, as a lens through which to view the world, it was constantly challenged by the choices I made and the worlds I found myself in. From my safe home environment, I found myself travelling to schools further and further afield for new opportunities, each time finding myself surrounded by people, cultures, and stories that were completely foreign – refugees, new migrants and English language learners, special needs children, and families of origin completely different to mine. By the time I attended acting school, in far-flung Western Sydney – a region known as a melting pot of cultures, communities, and backgrounds, I was thoroughly obsessed with understanding and investigating voices, accents, languages, and the sounds we are capable of making, and the mysteries of how these patterns can magically divide or unite us.
When I came to study voice formally, this passion only deepened. In my first Graduate Diploma at NIDA, I worked directly with Indigenous actors in training like Shari Sebbens, Miranda Tapsell, and Travis Cardona, all of whom continue to contribute amazing perspectives and work to the cultural life of Australia, and our understanding of the Indigenous Australian experience. They have also gone on to be vocal about how actor training in institutions like NIDA needs to change. I witnessed several specific instances during their training which these artists subsequently have spoken to, but I lacked the language then to understand why what I was seeing troubled me. A white guy’s discomfort alone can’t build a future, but a white guy’s embrace of and centring of a blak kid’s discomfort can empower that blak kid, so long as their story is always at the centre. As the white guy, I'm discovering the beauty in stepping back and listening, in centring (for my own folks) the grace of the other half of expression, namely impression AKA listening.
With this history in mind, when Shari Sebbens invited me in 2023 to work with Indigenous actor Angeline Penrith on her voice and dialect for an Indigenous led production called Blaque Showgirls, I resolved to approach this work as a listener. As Angeline and I had never met, and she was very nervous about her task, I was very conscious of entering a one-on-one space with her as a white man purporting to bear authority over her voice. Through this tentative process, as we both became more comfortable with each other, I was able to hear what she needed that was different to non-Indigenous students I have taught. Our work became much more conversational, experiential, person-to-person, and I was able to prepare specific resources for her that gave her confidence in her task.
As an arts practitioner and pedagogue based in so-called Australia, my experience of other cultures and particularly in North America, has shown that in this country we (and by “we” I mean white artists and pedagogues specifically in this application, but I also mean all white people generally in this country) are, by and large children when it comes to speaking about race, indigeneity, gender, diversity, and trauma in an artistic setting. Most of us white Australians do everything we can to avoid discussing the obvious and evident in our society. To the point of denying or supressing discussion about the realities of our colonial history.
Therefore, when I was a visiting scholar at UNC Chapel Hill, working closely with actors Shanel Leonard and April Mae Davis in 2017, the experience of being a white Australian in the American South, working with and teaching people of colour in contexts in which their lived identities and experience were raised and spoken of and directly addressed was very unfamiliar. Moreover, both these actors were being asked to speak in dialects which people who looked like them historically would not have spoken (RP and Cornish).
This experience only served to cement my commitment to a decolonial approach to voice and dialect teaching, which first and foremost begins with teaching and examining the sounds of human speech free from valued language and, fundamentally, replacing judgement with curiosity. The more sounds we learn to hear, the more we learn to hear sounds.
BUT coupled with this must be the acknowledgement that the way we communicate is intimately tied to our identity and culture. As such I take a very individual approach to the teaching and learning of accent and dialect. While I begin with teaching how accents and dialects as a whole work and function in human experience, society, and crucially in the context of our work as performers, from there, one size never fits all.
Furthermore, ignorance and misunderstanding thrives in the dark. As such every class I teach on dialect begins with a discussion of what sounds and words and phrases the students have heard or noticed while out in the world – in strangers, in family, in themselves, on television, etc. Sometimes one doesn’t know what is okay to ask unless one has a frame of reference. A space where awkward questions are permitted, crucially, without any agenda, has proved the most fruitful, educative, and emancipatory for all of my students regardless of their own individual background or identity.
My position as voice and dialect teacher for ECMT in Adelaide introduced me to other needs, diverse stories and experiences, such as my first time teaching trans and gender diverse students. As a faculty, spearheaded by our course leader George Torbay, we became the first course at the university to ask for student’s pronouns at the beginning of each year, and to advocate for accommodations for campus facilities where this was required. We encouraged discussions and advocacy from the students about their needs and how we could maintain an equitable and inclusive environment for all of the student body. In setting assessments for students, I have increasingly felt that requiring them to find scripts for characters that rigidly match their gender is largely unnecessary – except where future casting opportunities in a far less accommodating industry may be a consideration. I’m always led by the students in this regard.
In terms of the texts I bring to class to apply our work to, I do my best to explore classical texts with an eye to the continuity of form in contemporary works – such as examining Shakespearean sonnets alongside contemporary poets of diverse lived experiences and Indigenous writers such as Nola Gregory, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Imtiaz Dharker, Gwen Benaway, and Christopher Soto.
Two assessment tasks which I employ are built upon DEI principles, especially the desire for a decolonial approach to the human voice, as well as my oft stated ethos that curiosity is the antidote to judgement. The first is the Creation Story exercise, which necessitates a deep research and connection to the chosen story to be told, and then creatively designing a respectful and embodied telling of it.
The second is what I have called the Foreign Language Task and is an advanced, shared research project which culminates in the performance of a dramatic scene in a foreign language, not owned by either of the performers. Through deep research, respectful endeavour, and forensic-level examination of the sounds, words, and structures of a language not their own, students discover, usually without planning to, how detailed their own language is and can be. Crucially from my perspective as a Voice teacher, they are forced to find the underlying truth of information which is not intellectual. An audience who does not understand the language has no way to understand the “sense” of what you are saying, but they can, if what we are fond of calling “truth” is present, be told a story. These initiatives collectively contribute to a learning environment that celebrates diversity, accommodates individual needs and interests, foster community engagement, and encourage students to embrace a variety of perspectives and experiences.
In the future, I am committed to continuing my efforts in fostering an inclusive and equitable environment in both my teaching and scholarly pursuits. A part of my teaching process includes (where possible) a final reflective questionnaire for each student which is firstly for them to reflect on their experience on their own terms, and secondly to hold themselves accountable for their own progress. It is also for me to assess, if required, the integration of their learning, but crucially it is designed to allow me to continue to refine and improve my teaching practices through giving my students a place to reflect on their experiences and expectations in their own words, so I never stop listening, and continue to be held accountable myself.
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