Friend Ethie

Voice Teacher, Performer, Singer

Lives in Boulder, Colorado USA

Roy Hart Voice Teacher since 2005

I connect most strongly to Wolfsohn’s image of the voice as a bridge between the mind and the collective unconscious, and a way of becoming more fully aware of the nature and potential of what it is to be human. We work in an atmosphere that honours the inherent expressive value of all sounds. From that base of openness, trust and curiosity, one works to uncover a wider range of sound expression than one has imagined. The process is joyful, fearful, embarrassing, messy, exciting, playful, demanding a total presence of body, mind and spirit. The voice is developed as a literal and figurative tool for both self-awareness and the transformation of that awareness into conscious life with others, whether that be in performance of works of art, or in the performance of one’s own daily life. I believe a core value of the Roy Hart work is the dissolving of artificial boundaries between life and art.

Ethelyn Friend is an American teacher, performer & writer based in Colorado.

She met the Roy Hart Theatre of France in 1991. She was then a trained soprano and actress who had been warned ‘never to sing below middle C’. The intensive work which followed profoundly revolutionized the course of her life artistically, physically, and spiritually. Ethie is a founding faculty member and Associate Professor with Naropa University’s MFA Theatre: Contemporary Performance, the first graduate training program in the US to use Roy Hart work as the foundation of its vocal training. She teaches workshops throughout the US, and has been training prospective teachers at Malérargues in the Roy Hart Teacher Training Program since 2010.

Ethylen Friend has trained with Kaya Anderson, Jonathan Hart-Makwaia, Marita Günther, Carol Mendelsohn, Rossignol and Saule Ryan.
She speaks English and French.

Contact

E-mail: ethiefriend@gmail.com
Website Naropa University MFA in Contemporary Performance,
www.naropa.edu/academics/masters/contemporary-performance

Video:
Aerial production of Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida at Baryschnikov Arts Center, NYC. At 3:00, Ethie plays Cassandra, using music and extended sounds to warn of the Fall of Troy, HTTPS://Vimeo.com/4584284