Christine Hamel

Christine Hamel (she/her/hers) is an actor, voice and text specialist, director, and scholar. Her research centers voice, listening, and breath as ethical acts; and she integrates psychophysical methods, mindfulness, and activism in her teaching and practice. She is co-author with philosopher Ann J. Cahill of Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice (Bloomsbury/Methuen). The book explores the phenomenon of voice as a lived, sonorous and embodied experience marked by the social structures that surround it, including systemic forms of injustice such as ableism, sexism, racism, and classism. Their interdisciplinary work offering a justice-centered approach to voice training was the focal point for the VASTA/CEUVOZ 2023 joint conference in La Paz, Mexico.

Christine’s work as a voice and text coach and/or consultant is known extensively in the region and beyond, having worked with Cort Theatre (Broadway), the Tony Award-winning Huntington Theatre Company, PTP/NYC, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, New Repertory Theatre, Lyric Stage Company, Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, Central Square Theater, Company One, Audible, UnifyAmerica.org, Mobius Executive Leadership, and many other organizations.

Christine has also specialized in the developments of solo work, including Ibrahim Miari’s award-winning In Between (co-devisor and director), storyteller Antonia Lassar’s God Box (director), and most recently the world premiere of Maurice Parent’s Mr. Parent (Lyric Stage Company and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, voice coach and associate director). Christine was named a Granada Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis where she devised and directed a solo performance-based project titled Alone/Together. She served as playwright, actor, and director with the collaborative ensemble-based community-centered company – Village Theatre Project – which specialized in new play development. Christine founded and served as the artistic director of the Femina Shakes initiative at BU, committed to feminist and queer reimaginings of Shakespeare’s work unconstrained by the limitations of conventional gender narratives.

Her acting credits include off-Broadway and regional productions, including at PTP/NYC, Huntington Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Center, New Repertory Theatre, Underground Railway Theatre, Boston Center for American Performance, Greater Boston Stage Company, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, and others.

Christine has also served on the faculties of the Walnut Hill School, Emerson College, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, BU Opera Institute, and Longy School of Music of Bard College, and as guest faculty at MICHA (Michael Chekhov Association), where she was named a 2020 MICHA Teacher-Scholar to support her ongoing research. She has been invited to guest lecture both nationally and internationally, including at the ACT International (Italy), Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (UK), Shanghai Theater Academy (China), StageSource, New England Conservatory, and Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI). Christine is a Designated Linklater Voice teacher, holds a teacher training certificate of completion from MICHA (Michael Chekhov Association), is a certified Divine Sleep® Meditation and Mindfulness Leader, and is a certified First-Degree Reiki Practitioner. Member: AEA, VASTA, ATHE, MICHA, Embodied Voices Research Network

Selected Publications

• Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021
• “Toward Intervocality: Linklater, the Body, and Contemporary Feminist Theory” [reprint], Voice and Identity, 1^st Edition, London: Routledge, 2025
• “The Swirl of Emotion Among Us: Affect, The Voice, and Performance Training”, British Journal of Aesthetics, November 2024
• “Philosophizing About/With the Voice: Deploying Theory to Deepen Practices Committed to Vocal Justice”, Voice and Speech Review, December 2023, pp. 70-79

Awards

• 2022 Granada Artist Residency, University of California, Davis
• 2020-21 MICHA (Michael Chekhov Association) Teacher-Scholar in Residence
• 2016-19 St. Botolph Club Artist Residency Fellowship