A couple of weeks ago, I had a chat with Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) legend, Briony Greenhill, exploring what might happen on our upcoming 5-day 'Performance and Parts' workshop. More about that below, but first - here's the video:

Here's the link to the video on youtube.

The following is my loose paraphrasing of the conversation.

We started by talking about being allergic to feathers. I'd slept in a feather bed for three nights when I was up in Glasgow and you can hear the feathers in my lungs!

We eased into the conversation by reminiscing back to our 'Deep Play' retreat that we co-facilitated for two years at Embercombe in Devon, where we combined Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) with body-based play, meditation and Internal Family Systems (IFS). 

We discussed a bit about what might happen on our upcoming Performance and Parts workshop in Devon from April 27-May1. 

Giving some context, Briony had been wondering about how her students can retain the technicolour dreamcoats of creativity that they develop through the safety of group workshop experiences, when out in the world...

I shared a little about my recent performance in Glasgow at the British Association of Dramatherapists conference (3 days before this interview was recorded). I described how my parts had helped and hindered in the run up to the performance.

I also shared how, in the past, my parts have projected criticism and hatred onto audiences. In my previous life as a comedy punk singer, I made myself bigger than the audience in retaliation to my perception of their hatred. I mused about how this same projection mechanism can also cause people to make themselves smaller, tighter, tenser, less than they are able to be. I've been investigating this phenominon for many years in many contexts and the Internal Family Systems (IFS) lens has been useful for me to explore the role that our inner parts play in this.

I'm excited to share these kinds of experiments with vocal improvisers, to help them find out which parts are trying to help them stay safe, getting to know these parts through the body and maybe even channeling the voices of the parts into their creative expression.

I explained a little about how IFS works in helping people to get to know their inner parts with compassion and curiosity, and when the parts feel really heard and really seen, space opens up.

Briony described this as, "peace descends." 

I clarified that this work is not about banishing our parts, it's about creating a relationship with them, from our expansive state of Self or witnessing consciousness - and then it becomes more of a conversation or a dance between us and our parts.

Briony spoke about the desire to bring her practice from behind closed doors or in safe natural spaces to audiences. She spoke about welcoming her self home. When she can do this with and for an audience, it encourages them to welcome themselves home. She said, this "...widens the frame of what it is to be in wholeness as a whole human, with shadow, with shade, with wounds that haven't healed yet, with vulnerabilities and ways that I fuck up..."

I spoke about the risk of improvisation and how our parts are conditioned to make sure that the messy stuff doesn't come out in front of an audience! When we really allow ourselves to flow, we risk showing the world how crazy we are, how vulnerable we are, how unhinged we are...

Briony continued... how beautiful we are and how magnificent we are....

I spoke about Brene Brown's work on vulnerability - she says you can't selectively numb - if you turn off all the gnarly bits, you also turn off the joy and the pleasure and the beauty. This is what I've been exploring for the last 20 years; inner permission and inner consent and how to allow all that stuff out to play.

Coming back to the show I performed in Glasgow, I shared a bit of the premise - it was a semi-improvised performance-lecture for dramatherapists about the parts that led me to burnout and how meditation and IFS have been paving the way toward my recovery. I spoke about how my story impacted the audience (I got a standing ovation!).

Briony saw this work as, "expanding the peace field." She took us on a tangent, describing her toddler's first experience of seeing violence on TV and the aftermath as she witnessed violence entering his consciousness in real time. The life-honouring, earth-honouring woman in her wanted to say "No, it's not fucking normal!"

She spoke about the fear, trauma violence matrix that has become the norm and how it manifests on micro levels, with judgements and shaming and all the ways our vulnerability has been taken away or weaponised.

She described the piss-takey nature of British culture and how we've learned to guard what is tender, as a very sane response to a scary and unsafe culture. Then she uplifted the radical act of being a walking embodiment of safety and how sharing that safety with audiences through performance can cause a ripple effect and lead to the sacred matrix of co-operation, where all the nervous systems can be safe and attuned.

She shared some new collaborations that are emerging for her - one with a school play therapist, bringing vocal improvisation to trainee teachers, and another with a medical doctor and psychiatrist in the NHS - helping staff to sing, so there can be singing births and singing deaths and consciousness of vicarious trauma. Briony has visions of people singing the new health system into being. From the place of regulation and safety and peace.

I loved the hugeness of Briony's aspiration and devotion and passion! I wondered - can improvisation - owning your shit, sharing your shit - can that bring about peace? Through bringing down all the charge around the shame, the taboo, the dirty things that live in our cellars. What if we just go down there with a candle and see what's actually down there? In my performances I take all my cellar shit onto the stage and say "here's all my cellar shit" and people say "I've got some cellar shit too!" and so it ripples...

Briony was recently whisked away to Charlotte Church's retreat centre in Wales, where she shared collaborative vocal improvisation with a group of people on a leadership programme. They had no idea what they were letting themselves in for and they were scared, but they could all do it magnificently! Briony asked "why do we keep these beautiful gardens under concrete?" She mused that it has to be a response to living in less-safe cultures.

Briony's hope is that through building these pods of great safety, the safety will spread.

I spoke about my responsibility as an artist; to keep meeting myself and to keep meeting all the blocks that get in the way of me just expressing what's in my heart. I've really taken this on! I see this as my responsibility as a facilitator and as a therapist - to help artists to take the blocks out the way and let this stuff flow through, because I believe it's all already there and the work is removing whatever constraints there are that are preventing it from really flowing. 

IFS has been a really good tool to help people meet their parts with love and compassion - I demonstrated how this might work with my punk part and the little girl she's protecting. 

Towards the end, I shared a little bit about what I've been learning through my recent Somatic IFS training, exploring parts through the body, breath and voice. I'm really exited to try these methods out with singers!

If you're interested in finding out more about the 5-day Performance and Parts workshop: 27 April - 1 May 2026 in Buckfastleigh, Devon, check out Briony's Website.