Students share knowledge at Australian symposium
Standing, from left, Jason Capello and Sarah Martik, students at California University of Pennsylvania, and their instructor, Dr. Michele Paden, prepare for a vocal symposium in Australia. Accompanying them is instructor Brian Eisiminger.
From left, California University students Clayton Rush, Sarah Martik, Molly Malady and Jason Capello take a break from preparing for a workshop they will be present in Melbourne, Australia.
CALIFORNIA – Four students and two faculty members of California University of Pennsylvania’s theater program rang in the new year across the world.
They are presenting at the Estill World Voice Symposium in Melbourne, Australia. The symposium focuses on the vocal method of a Donora native, the late Josephine Estill. It was introduced in the early 1990s and is now recognized internationally. An acclaimed classical singer, Estill toured Europe in the 1950s. She died at 89 in 2010.
Sarah Martik, 22; Molly Malady, 21; Jason Capello, 22; Clayton Rush, 21; and Dr. Michele Paden, voice instructor and chairwoman of the theater program at Cal U.; along with Brian Eisiminger, an instructor at Waynesburg Central High School and Cal U., left New Year’s Eve for the conference dedicated to Estill’s work.
“Jo Estill could sing and bring an audience to tears, but she carried with her this burning question of, ‘How am I doing this?’ She just knew she opened her mouth and sang,” said Eisiminger, Waynesburg music instructor and a practitioner of Estill Voice Training. “She worried that she wouldn’t be able to do it the next time. She would pray, ‘Please let me do the same thing,’ because she didn’t know what exactly she had done.”
While earning a master’s degree in music education in the 1970s, Estill also studied speech and hearing. She went on to teach voice in the Department of Otolaryngology at the Upstate Medical Center in New York. It was there where the foundation of EVT was laid. Working with colleagues who specialized in voice research, Estill researched six voice qualities: speech, falsetto, sob, twang, opera and belt. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that her education and research combined to become EVT.
Estill knew certain voices stirred emotions with sounds capable of making someone weep, laugh, melt or become completely unhinged. We hear them in movies, on the radio, in courtrooms and classrooms. There is something powerful about the highs, lows, softness or harshness that comes out. Some can put us to sleep while others have us rapt with attention.
Estill created her own language to teach others how to control those sounds based upon physiology and anatomy. There are many parts to the anatomy that create sound and by understanding where these parts are located and how to manipulate them sounds can be altered. Estill figured out how to do this and now students such as Martik, Rush, Malady and Capello have as well.
The four will offer a workshop in EVT for attendees of the symposium. For the most part, guests of the symposium already are versed in EVT to some degree.
The uninitiated might have a difficult time understanding how someone whose voice sounds like nails on a chalk board could be taught to sound sweeter. However, acting out short theatrical pieces from their roles in university productions, each of the student presenters broke it down.
“Her model is very graded in science. It is tangible,” Eisiminger said. “It looks at the manipulation of each part and shows you, I am doing this and this and this.”
Acting out a scene as Fred Gailey from “Miracle on 34th Street,” Capello showed how different he sounded from one season of doing the play to the next. Capello said he thought he sounded one way when in reality he was portraying Gailey quite differently than what he believed. Breaking the part down through EVT, Capello produced a much more authoritative and confident Gailey in the latter performance.
He, Martik, Malady and Rush will detail how they achieve the voices of their characters, including a 10-year-old girl and an older woman, through the application of EVT.
Paden, who is not a singer, applies EVT to the spoken word. She uses EVT in the theater department for character development, such as what her students will share in Australia. Paden said it is not intended to change how someone sounds when they speak in normal conversation but to give them the tools to speak more effectively when needed, such as in a job interview.
“It gets rid of improper speech sounds and what is displeasing about them. It allows you to put your best voice forward when it matters,” she said. “I can help to improve the quality and strength of a voice with EVT.”
She said she was invited to attend an EVT symposium two years ago but couldn’t do it at that time. They are held every two years at a different location around the world.
“They said, ‘You’ll go to the next one, right?’ It happened to be in Australia,” she said.
Paden surprised the students with the invitation via email when everything was in place.
Paden and Eisiminger also will present at the conference, but not in a workshop format.
Both Paden and Eisiminger offer skills in EVT as part of the Mon Valley Performing Arts Academy, founded by Paden and operated out of the theater department at California University. It is Paden’s way of giving back to the community she grew up in. They host a two-week summer program for children 17 and younger that culminates in a full-scale production of dance, acting and singing with EVT as a foundation.
Martik, who recently graduated with degrees in theater and Spanish, is pursuing a career in stage management. She has completed the first level of EVT and hopes to teach the method after earning further certification.
Eisiminger became familiar with the method while working for Pagen as a substitute instructor during an early version of the summer program.
“I was excited to incorporate it into my own teaching,” he said. “This method allows you to sing all of those (the different voice qualities) in a healthy way (not straining your vocal cords).” Both he and Paden are currently studying to reach the next level of EVT, a lengthy and difficult process.
Malady, like Rush and Martik, were theater majors and learned EVT at Cal. U. Capello, who is an environmental studies major, found EVT in an acting class, a required elective as a freshman.
All four hope EVT will help them achieve their career goals.
Malady, who credits a relative, Brittany Blevins Mosco, a talented actress, as the influence for her desire to act, said, “I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. Ultimately, anywhere I can perform would suffice for me. I’m just hoping its New York.”
The other three budding actors said they too see New York as a possible launching pad for their careers in entertainment. Rush put out the loftiest of goals, using an EVT inspired voice he said hopes Broadway is his end result.