photo credit: Broose Dickinson

Lynn Book's adventurous performance work has evolved over the past 20 years from a very physical and visually charged form to include a broad range of vocal activities ranging from textual play and DaDa scores to more free-form musical and extended vocal territories.  Her vocal work appears on several compilation recordings and she has produced CDs and tapes on her own  and other independent labels, including dice 2 [she says], a collection of contemporary women composers in collaboration with Harvestworks, New York City.  Other production credits include live performance and media events at Thundergulch, the Chicago Cultural Center, Lunar Cabaret and Hothouse.  She has performed her provocative interdisciplinary performance theater works such as "Gorgeous Fever" and "tongue" and given vocal concerts throughout the U.S. and also in Europe.  In New York City, her performances have been shown at such places as the Knitting Factory, Roulette, the Kitchen, Judson Church and at HERE.  Lynn Book has been recognized and honored with several grants, fellowships and residencies for her creative endeavors that continue to unfold in new and surprising ways (including radio dramas).  Her explorations in contemporary and traditional performance practices contribute to her far reaching approach to discovering, teaching and performing the vitality of the voice as it engages with body, mind and world.

Lynn Book has been an innovative educator, teaching in a wide variety of settings for over 15 years. Voicelab was founded in 1999 to expand and cultivate her dynamic teaching practice and philosophy about the 'voiced body'.  Her unique interdisciplinary approach in her teaching practice and her artistic pursuits, has drawn hundreds to work with her from theater to music, visual arts and dance. She works with professional and non-professional vocal explorers looking for a deeper connection to living in the voice and with the practically minded looking for effortless communication in daily affairs.  She has taught performance, voice, speech, media and interdisciplinary courses at Barnard College in New York City, was Associate Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 10 years, and taught at Columbia College, among others. She continues to conduct master voice and movement workshops at such sites as The Kitchen Summer Institute, Movement Research, University of Connecticutt and at New York University among others. Lynn Book currently teaches voice in the theater program at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
 
 

[out of laughter, breathy]  "I'm reallly not quite sure what's happening to me... You see, (I am) I have - a condition. I'm coming out of it though, and I am discovering this! There is something I have to continue... I've begun something that I haven't finished..." [hand wanders, searching, then is subdued] "I still don't understand what's happening to me, but I think it begins with the impossibility of.......writing! That is correct writing, well-behaved writing... You see, in order to write correctly, one must incessantly prune [prunes floral arrangement] forbid [yanks a flower from the arrangement] and eliminate ."[crushes flower with hands and drops it to the floor] from Physical Vision - text: Lynn Book photo: Lynn Book in Physical Vision (1989-90)  photo credit: Lucien Vector

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