Biography
Cindy Block holds an honorary BFA and an MFA in Acting, a teaching diploma from York University, and a certificate to teach Embodied Practices®. She studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York and is a veteran actor of the Canadian Stage, having played over 30 professional roles. Throughout her performance career, she has participated in the artistic development of several new Canadian works and was co-founder of P.I.E. Theatre in Vancouver. She is currently a core performer with Toronto Playback Theatre: an improvisational form developed to generate dialogue in community and encourage the recognition of shared experience through storytelling.
Her artistic research includes extensive study and application of the practice of Authentic Movement to writing, performance and collective creation for the stage, culminating in a Master’s thesis Shakespeare on Wild Ground, a one-woman show Heart of Flesh, and The Cassandra Project. She has been a co-presenter of this research at the International Festival of Making Theatre in Athens, Greece, The Myth and Theatre Festival’s Summer University at the Roy Hart Centre in France, and at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research conference.
Over the past 15 years, she has taught voice, collective creation, movement for actors, and Embodied Practice® at York University’s Theatre Department, the Humber College Comedy School, The Centre for Indigenous Theatre as well as privately with industry professionals. Her Pedagogical interest is in synthesis of principles for bringing voice and movement together in actor training.