OUR HISTORY

  • 1998: Founder Arthur Lessac meets with his certified teachers to discuss the future of Kinesensics.

  • 2000: New certification and mentoring program begins training qualified teachers in the full scope of Lessac’s vision.

  • 2004: Trainers meet to launch the Lessac Training and Research Institute© and elect the first Board of Directors.

  • 2006: The Institute presents the Inaugural Lessac Conference, co-sponsored with the University of Denver at Colorado, on January 12-14 in Denver, Colorado. National Conferences now occur bi-annually, with Regional Conferences in the off years. Conferences are places to share critical and practical insights into the Lessac work as it relates to theatre performance and production, theatre teaching, community building, English as a Second Language, clinical speech therapy, and vocal coaching, among other topics.

  • 2010: The Institute releases “Collective Writings on the Lessac Voice and Body Work: A Festschrift”, edited by Marth Munro, Sean Turner, Allan Munro and Kathleen Campbell, a collection of published works by Lessac practitioners, certified trainers and scholars.

  • 2011: Two-year study program established in the Arts, Media, and Culture program of the University of Rijeka, Croatia. In 2013, this becomes a three-year program of study.

 

  • 2012: Institute establishes new level of training: Lessac Practitioner.

  • 2013: The first Intensive training ever to be held outside of the United States occurs at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, led by Master Teachers Marth Munro and Deborah Kinghorn. This training is now regularly presented every two years.

  • 2013: Creation of Director of Research position and the Research Committee.

  • 2013: Establishment of the International Committee. Since its establishment, workshops have been presented in England, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Brazil, the Philippines, Croatia, South Africa, and Finland.

  • 2014: “Essential Lessac”, by Arthur Lessac and Deborah Kinghorn, is released by RMJ Donald Publishers.

  • 2017: “Play with Purpose”, edited by Marth Munro et al, a compilation of new research about Kinesensics, is published by Ingram.

  • 2017: Article describing Lessac Kinesensic Training published for the “Vocal Traditions” series in the Voice and Speech Review (VSR).

  • 2018: First Intensive workshop in Australia is held at NIDA in Sydney, under the direction of Nancy Krebs and Katarina Moraitis.

  • 2018: First workshop specifically for Speech Language Pathologists led by Kittie Verdolini and Nancy Krebs.