When I was in the first year of my undergrad degree at the University of Toronto, I caught a bad cold and lost my voice. For months, I had to use considerable muscle tension in order to phonate, and my voice sounded raspy and weak. Desperate for a solution, I visited a doctor who was recommended to me as an “expert in healthcare for singers.” He told me that he didn’t know why my voice hadn’t come back fully, but he did recommend that I not gain any more weight if I hoped that people would believe that I could play a romantic lead on stage…

 As singers, our bodies are often considered fair game for discussion, whether we like it or not. Is our voice too big for our bodies? Does our gender expression align with the character we are playing? Do we hide our pain well? Do we look anxious, depressed, or hesitant?  

As singers, we also learn to use our bodies in extraordinary ways, developing a stronger sense of ourselves and our mind-body connection. This relationship to our bodies can lead us to feel more confident, grounded, and strong. 

This project is intended to be a creative and radical undertaking. I am seeking contributing artists who can engage in a public conversation about how our bodies enter into singing work.

A couple of notes about perspective and methodology: as the leader of this project, I want to stress that mind and body cannot be decoupled. If you want to write something about your experiences of mental illness and how that has impacted your singing, that would be within the scope of the project. The project adopts the perspective that the “body” is a site for the negotiation of power and oppression.

What does being an Our Singing Bodies contributing artist look like?

As a contributing artist in the project, you might think about answering some of these questions, or you may choose to interpret the relationship between bodies and singing completely differently.

• How does your body “speak” for you before you open your mouth?

• How does singing work encourage us to look at our bodies differently? How is this positive? How is this negative?

• How has singing changed your body?

• How has your body impacted your singing?

What might you get out of this? 

As a contributing artist, you will have the chance to share your perspective on singing and your body with a network of other professional singers. You will also have my artistic support and guidance while working on this creative project. 

This project will be a platform to focus attention on this issue that is central to our lives as artists; empowering us to question, express, and create. As singers, the project will allow you to showcase your thoughts and work in a new light, allowing audiences to get to know you better and giving you a new artistic outlet.

Through participating in the project or exploring the contributions, Our Singing Bodies helps to develop a deeper understanding of the embodied nature of singing work, with the ultimate goal to strengthen the contributing artist/singers tools of self-expression and embodied knowledge. Through artist-led projects, contributing artist/singers interrogate the role their bodies play in singing, bolstering their sense of agency and self-determination. The project adopts an intersectional feminist perspective and hopes to elevate the status of sexual, gender, racial and ethnic minorities within the singing community. Our Singing Bodies also has a particular interest in disability and health inclusion strategies.

Examples of submissions:

• Writing about the experience of embodying a character that is very different from yourself, such as performances that require you to perform a different gender/ age than your own.

• Photos of yourself before and after a physically exhilarating or exhausting practice session

• A song about being too small, too big, too feminine, too masculine, too anything for a particular role.

• A story about how pain, injury, or illness has impacted your singing

• A video of you singing something that makes your body feel good/bad/something and talking about your experience

• A drawing about getting up to sing while experiencing anxiety

• … really anything your creative and brilliant mind can think of!