Our Freedom & Focus Presenters

 

Perry Piercy, Co-Coordinator

Perry Piercy is the lead facilitator of the Freedom and Focus Conference, to be held in Aotearoa, New Zealand in July/August 2025. She is looking forward to welcoming people from all over the world to the Conference, which will be held at New Zealand's leading Drama School, Toi Whakaari. Passionate about empowering people to access the full, embodied expression of their voices, Perry works regularly for a number of pro bono causes including
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Davaa Batchuluun

Davaa Batchuluun is the Dean of the Stage Speech Department at the Mongolian State University of Arts and Culture. She has performed in numerous films, television series, and theatres in Mongolia.
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Amy Chaffee

Amy Chaffee is a voice, speech, and dialect coach for theatre, television and film as well as a playwright, actor and director. She is an Assistant Professor of Voice and Acting at Tulane University in New Orleans. Recent credits include The OA for Netflix, All is By My Side written and directed by Academy Award Winner, John Ridley, Main Street, Lay The Favorite, Welcome To the Rileys, City of Ember, etc.
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Noah Drew

Noah Drew (he/him) is a communication & performance teacher and a theatre maker based in Montreal. As a coach in the business world, Noah has worked extensively with leaders across North America and in Europe across a broad range of fields. His clients have included leaders of all levels, from executives of global companies to front line managers of modest organizations. Read more…

Robin Gordon

Robin Gordon teaches performance, directing, and dramatic literature courses and serves as director of the drama program at Warner Pacific College. Recent productions include Romeo and Juliet; Disaster/Relief, a devised theatre project; Almost, Maine, and Sophocles’s Antigone in a version by Bertolt Brecht. Previous directing, devising, and choreography projects include Three Sisters, Godspell, Oleanna, Journeys, I phel o a (I fell away), and The Yellow Wallpaper. Read more…

 

Micha Espinosa, Co-Coordinator

Micha Espinosa is an Arizona-based artist, activist, professor, teacher, and voice, speech, and dialect coach. She has performed, lectured, and taught voice and speech around the world since 1992. She is a proud 30-year member of SAG/AFTRA and has performed in film, television, and regional theatre. Professor in School of Music, Dance, and Theatre at Arizona State University (ASU), affiliate faculty with ASU’s School of Transborder Studies & the Sidney Poitier New American Film School; Read more…

Joanna Battles

As a Voice, Text, and Dialect Coach, Joanna Battles has worked for many local theatres in the St. Louis region including the MUNY, New Jewish Theatre, St. Louis Actor’s Studio, STL Shakespeare Festival, and the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Most recently at the Rep, Joanna dialect coached Dial M for Murder, and Sherwood in the 24' - 25' season.
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Rachelle Dart

Rachelle Dart is a performer, theatre maker, traditional storyteller and teaching artist currently residing in Phoenix, Arizona. She is an Advanced Actor Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors and is passionate about safe stage violence in education and performance. She performs and teaches improvisational comedy and directed local troupe, The Penguin Player, for four year as they lovingly embraced fear and failure. Read more…

Rachel Finley

Rachel Finley is a voice, text, and accent coach, director, actor, intimacy director/coordinator, and Arizona State University professor, who earned her BFA at Carnegie Melon University and MFA at Florida Atlantic University. Professor Finley is a certified teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and Knight Thompson Speechwork. She has trained in Intimacy Direction with ICOC, TIE, and IDC. Read more…

Matthew Greenberg

Matthew Greenberg is an Assistant Professor specializing in musical theatre, voice, speech, and acting. He has previously held teaching appointments at West Virginia University, The Ohio State University, and the Tennessee Governor's School of the Arts at Middle Tennessee State University.
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Gin Hammond

Gin Hammond is a Harvard University/Moscow Art Theatre grad and a certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®. Hammond specializes in voice-over, public speaking, and dialect coaching, and can be heard on commercials, audiobooks, radio plays, and a variety of video games including BattleTech, DotA 2, State of Decay 1 & 2, Aion, and Halo 3 ODST.
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Margaret Laurena Kemp

Margaret Kemp is an actor, interdisciplinary performing artist and theatre arts instructor focusing on the areas of Voice and Speech. Within her performance practice Kemp is interested in questioning the how systems of scientific and social engineering manipulate and commodify voice, breath, flesh, communities and the natural world. She has taught and performed worldwide.
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Sara Matchett

Dr. Sara Matchett is an award winning Director and Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town's Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies (CTDPS). She is also a Lead Trainer of Fitzmaurice Voicework®, the Regional Co-ordinator of the Fitzmaurice Institute for Africa, and an Advanced Breathwork Practitioner with Breathwork Africa (www.breathworkafrica.co.za).
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Budi Miller

Budi Miller is a Lead Teacher and Director of Advanced Training for the Fitzmaurice Institute. He is Co-Artistic Director of the Theatre of Others. He is an UNESCO designated master teacher of mask work. Budi was the Head of Acting, at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. He has been an actor-director-writer-teacher in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Australia, Malaysia, India, and Indonesia since 1992.
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Michael Morgan

Dr. Michael Morgan is a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he teaches voice, speech, text, and applied theatre. His other teaching credentials include Penn State, Yale School of Drama, Temple University, Walnut Street Theatre, Theatre Conservatorium in Brussels, Royal Conservatoire in Liege, Arena Stage, Neighborhood Playhouse, University of Hawaii, American Academy of Dramatic Art, UC San Diego, Pepperdine University, California Institute of the Arts, Shanghai Theatre Academy and Theatre of Changes in Athens.
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Michael Shipley

Michael Shipley is an actor, director, teacher, and voice/text coach. He was the founding Voice and Text Director for the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Minnesota and has coached productions and taught Shakespeare and voice for festivals across the country. He has also performed with many regional theatres including the American Conservatory Theatre, Missouri Repertory Theatre, American Players Theatre, Sacramento Theatre Company, as well as the Utah, Idaho, Valley, and San Francisco Shakespeare festivals.
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Natasha Staley

Natasha Staley is as an Assistant Professor of Voice and Acting in the Department of Theatre and Cinema at Virginia Tech. She serves as the department's voice and dialect coach and coaches privately. She first studied Fitzmaurice Voicework® as a graduate student under the instruction of Associate Teacher Patricia Delorey at FSU/Asolo Conservatory. Read more…

 

Lilian Wouters

Lilian Wouters will be going into her 3rd and final year as a part of the UC Irvine MFA in Acting Program. Lilian currently is teaching FV at the undergraduate level and hopes to continue breathing and being vibrantly present with students for years to come. She both enjoys working in large group classes and in individual one-one sessions. Always a fan of the California sun, when she graduates Lilian plans on basing her practice out of Los Angeles.
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Shannon Holmes

Shannon Holmes is an actor, singer, educator and artistic director of SoMo Theatre, a company dedicated to the creation of interdisciplinary performance that explores the intersection of singing and speech. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance with a Minor in Music from Concordia University, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College in the US, and a PhD in Drama and Theatre Arts from the University of Birmingham, UK. Read more…

Heather Lyle

Heather Lyle, NCVS Vocologist, B.M., M.M., F.V., E-RYT, C.Ht., is a graduate of the National Center of Voice and Speech’s Vocology Program with renown voice scientist Ingo Titze. In 2015 she studied at NYU Medical Center with the other most renown voice scientist in the world, Johan Sundberg and Dr. Brian Gill.
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Christine Menzies

Christine Menzies has been an actor, director, writer, and teacher in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Trinidad. She has also taught at Louisiana State University, Portland State University, the University of Southern California and Cal-State Pomona, as well as colleges and universities across Canada. Read more…

 

Julia Moody

Julia Moody trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did her graduate work in Voice Studies at the National Institute for Dramatic Arts (NIDA) in Sydney. She has worked as a professional actor in theatre, film, television, and radio since 1975, primarily in Australia and also in the U.K.. As a voice teacher and consultant Julia has worked with The Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Ballarat, NIDA's Open Programme, SBS TV and radio. Read more…

 

Fabio Motta

Fabio Motta is an actor, clown and teaching artist who had the fortune of performing and devising theatre in Australia, Italy and the United states. Notable theatre credits include; Three Sisters (New York Theatre Workshop), My Uncle Chekhov directed by Aleksey Burago (West End Theatre) and Pal Joey directed by Robert McQueen (HB Studios). Read more...

Dory Rebekah Sibley

Dory Rebekah Sibley (she/her) - mother, educator, original works artist, arts administrator - is the Executive Director and Professor of Voice and Ensemble Performance at the Accademia dell’Arte in Arezzo, Italy. She has been teaching for over two decades and served as an administrator and member of core faculty at the Accademia for 15 years before she joined the Theatre Department at Coastal Carolina University as an Assistant Professor of Voice and Speech.
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Brianne Taylor

Brianne Taylor is the Assistant Professor of Voice at West Virginia University, a voice and dialect coach, and a performer. She utilizes the work in development of breath awareness, vocal structuring, authenticity in the speaking voice that is aligned with the individual’s artistic voice, and creative approaches to performance and writing. Read more…

 

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