Mlima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage and directed by Shariffa Ali starts performances at the Repertory Theatre of St Louis tomorrow, May 28th. This production is happening in person! I’m honored to be working on this play for a second time, after coaching it at Westport Country Playhouse in 2019. I coached Vietnamese and Mandarin accents for this production at the Rep. More information about the production and tickets are available here.
Experiencing Accents #17
Experiencing Accents #17 wrapped on April 25th. It was truly a delight to lead this Knight-Thompson Speechwork workshop on the skills of accent acquisition with KTS Co-Director Andrea Caban. Looking forward to leading it again with KTS Certified Teacher Tyler Seiple in August. Below are the thumbnails from our session recordings.
Antigone
Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s virtual production of ANTIGONE adapted and directed by Gary M. English started performances last week and runs through April 11th. I served as Associate Director, as well as Voice and Text Coach. This virtual production is unlike any other I’ve worked on during the pandemic (or ever). It employs a scenic and projector installation in one of CRT’s theater spaces to make it really feel like the actors are together in the space. The production design is truly innovative and exciting to watch.
More info and tickets available here. Join us!
Experiencing Speech #30
Last week, I was lucky to co-teach the Knight-Thompson Speechwork workshop Experiencing Speech with KTS Co-Director Andrea Caban. This is the second time we’ve taught this workshop together while writing our book, also titled Experiencing Speech. We had a wonderful group of speechworkers in this thirtieth offering of the workshop. I learn new things each time I teach this workshop. It’s exciting.
Since these workshops have gone online, I've loved looking at our recording thumbnails from each session and reflecting on the journey.
A Fitzmaurice Voicework Warm-up
I recorded some floorwork for my students at UConn today and thought I would share with you all. It employs some Fitzmaurice Voicework principles, as well as aspects of FV destructuring and restructuring. Hope you enjoy!
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s virtual production of PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE by Shakespeare and directed by Raphael Massie opened last night, February 26th, 2021. I had a wonderful time working on this play for the first time and with this group of generous artists. Raphael Massie re-imagined this tale of high adventure, tragedy, and perseverance as a web graphic novel, complete with shadow puppetry and amazing illustrations by scenic designer Amber Convery.
Performances run online through March 7th More info and tickets available here. Join us!
Experiencing Speech (the book)
I’m very excited to share that I have co-written a speech book with fellow Knight-Thompson Speechwork Certified Teachers, Andrea Caban and Jeffrey Parker.
The book is titled Experiencing Speech: A Skills-Based, Panlingual Approach to Actor Training. It’s a beginner’s guide to Knight-Thompson Speechwork and a companion book to Speaking with Skill by KTS Co-Founder Dudley Knight.
The book imagines a one-semester speech class and lays out a progression of experiential exercises that comprise a descriptive approach to speech training and how it connects to other aspects of actor training.
The book will be published May 20, 2021 and is available for pre-order on Routledge’s website, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other places.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Experiencing Speech #28
The 28th offering of the Knight-Thompson Speechwork workshop Experiencing Speech finished last Friday. It was a delight to spend six days on Zoom with my co-teachers Eliza Simpson and Jeremy Sortore and with 26 curious and playful speechworkers. Together we explored vocal anatomy, the physical actions of speech sounds, all of the speech sounds observed in language, descriptive phonetics, and applications to text. Here are just a few moments from our journey:
Love and Information
I recently had the opportunity to do some accent coaching for a production of Love and Information by Caryl Churchill and directed by Rachel Jett at Connecticut College. We worked on a little bit of RP, Estuary English, Cockney, and Memphis, TN. The student actors were very quick studies!
Performances started November 14th and go through November 16th in the Harkness Chapel on Connecticut College’s campus and are only open to members of Conn College’s community.
Fitzmaurice Voicework Workshops
I recently had the opportunity to lead a workshop on Self-Care for the Vocal Tract for Certified Teachers of Fitzmaurice Voicework. My workshop was part of a series on self-care offered by the Advanced Training Team at the Fitzmaurice Institute. We focused on softening tension around the spine (especially the cervical spine and the occipital ridge), the neck, the jaw, the lips, the tongue, and the soft palate, and we connected those openings to breath support coming from the transverse abdominal muscle.
I am also part of a team of FV teachers offering a new kind of online workshop for the Fitzmaurice Institute: a six-part workshop on Fitzmaurice Fundamentals. I am co-teaching with FV Master Teacher and Lead Trainer Jeff Morrison on the second day of the workshop. We’ll focus that day on destructuring, or release of muscular tension in order to find spontaneous breath.
Men on Boats
MEN ON BOATS by Jaclyn Backhaus and directed by Beth Gardiner starts live-stream performances tonight for Connecticut Repertory Theatre. This is the first live, online production CRT has done!
The actors are all in different spaces, Zooming together to tell this true story of John Wesley Powell’s exploratory expedition on the Green and Colorado rivers in 1869. As stipulated by the playwright, the cast is comprised entirely of female-identifying and non-binary actors.
We had some fun exploring voicework for this medium. Performances run through October 18th. More info and tickets here.
Accent Webinars
This summer I led a series of Accent Webinars. Recordings of those webinars - along with my written breakdown of the accent’s features and links to samples of native speakers - are available now for purchase for $50 each.
Accent Webinar Packages are available for the following accents:
Afrikaans
Boston
Cockney
Dublin
Estuary
New York City
So-Called General American
Russian
Contact me here to purchase. And stay safe!
Online Fitzmaurice Voicework Summit
This past weekend, the Fitzmaurice Institute offered a free, online Fitzmaurice Voicework Summit. FV Teachers from all over the world, including founder Catherine Fitzmaurice, offered insights and practical experience of the work, and over 2,000 people participated.
I recorded a 30-minute video exploring lateral release in destructuring as part of the Bonus Fourth Day.
All four days of the Summit are available for purchase here, now that the Summit has ended. I highly recommend it as an introduction to FV or as a way to deepen your experience of it!
Online Summer Workshops
I am offering an 8-week online Introduction to Fitzmaurice Voicework this summer, starting later this month. The class will meet Mondays 1-2:30pm EDT on Zoom. The rate is a sliding scale of $5-$20. Pay what you can within that range, no questions asked.
I am also offering a series of pay-what-you-can online accent workshops. Group accent workshops will meet Tuesdays 1-2pm EDT on Zoom. Accents currently on the schedule are RP, Memphis, Dublin, So-Called General American, NYC, and Russian.
More info and instructions on how to register are here.
Black Lives Matter
Many organizations have been sharing statements on recent and ongoing events in the U.S. The Fitzmaurice Institute issued the following statement, and I share it here to commit myself to fighting for justice and fighting to end systemic racism and antiblack violence.
Everyone has the right to breathe. Black Lives Matter.
Catching Up on the Spring
Since going into quarantine in March, my work - like so much of life - has moved online.
In March and April, my Fitzmaurice Voicework colleague Tuuli Nilsson invited me to teach two online practical lectures on articulation for the second-year acting students at the University of the Arts Helsinki. It was delightful to introduce some Knight-Thompson Speechwork to those students and to get them curious about what they can do with their muscles of articulation to shape sound.
In April, Dr. Masi Asare included me in the second episode of her new podcast, Voicing Across Distance. Each week, she shares a reading on voice, engages in conversation with a voice scholar, and invites a voice coach to share an exercise. I was honored to be asked to share an exercise. You can listen to Episode Two here, and I highly recommend subscribing and listening to all of the episodes.
This past weekend I was invited to remotely attend the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s Forum of Theatre, Film & TV, part of Shanghai University League’s Forum for International Young Scholars. I had the honor of listening to Catherine Fitzmaurice and other theater practitioners and scholars give remarks on the current state of theatre, film, and TV and on how we move forward from here. Much gratitude to Catherine for the invitation.
Finally, I taught the Knight-Thompson Speechwork workshop Experiencing Speech online with KTS Master Teacher Andrea Caban at the end of May. This was the 26th offering of this workshop and only the second time it’s been taught online. We had a wonderful group of participants calling in from all over the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Italy, Czechia, and England. It was truly an enriching experience, and I had a blast teaching with Andrea for the first time!
Here’s a photo from the Shanghai Theatre Academy Forum:
Warm up your articulators without touching your face!
I recorded a warm-up for the muscles of expression and the articulators - that doesn’t require you to touch your face! There are some exercises that require you to touch your neck and the sides of your head. You can skip those if you want to! Much gratitude to my teachers Dudley Knight, Phil Thompson, and Nancy Houfek for these exercises.
Floor Warm-up
I recorded some floorwork this morning as I did it, and I’m sharing it with you here. The focus is on grounding and release. It’s about a half an hour long. Many thanks to my teachers Catherine Fitzmaurice, Saul Kotzubei, and Nancy Houfek for these exercises.
Sleuth
SLEUTH by Anthony Shaffer and directed by Adam Immerwahr started preview performances on Tuesday, March 10th, at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ. It’s a stunning production of a true thriller of a mystery play, and it was an absolute joy to work on the accents and vocal characterization with the cast and creative team. It played two preview performances, and, in order to protect the health and safety of the artists involved and the McCarter patrons, performances have been suspended through at least March 31st. An archival recording has been made so that hopefully more people will be able to see the production.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
My latest project is in performance at Connecticut Repertory Theatre right now. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, adapted by playwright Simon Stephens from the novel by Mark Haddon and directed by Kristin Wold, started performances in Storrs, CT, on February 27th and continues through March 8th. It’s a beautiful story about a 15-year-old boy with an extraordinary mind and a healthy dose of bravery. The play takes place in Swindon and in London, and the cast and I worked on a number of different accents, as well as some vocal extremes. Tickets and more info available here.
