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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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
Last month, I had the opportunity to teach the 25th offering of Experiencing Speech in NYC with two wonderful co-teachers, Nathan Crocker and Dayle Towarnicky. Experiencing Speech is a 6-day Knight-Thompson Speechwork workshop. It lays out a descriptive approach to speech training for actors (or anyone else who uses their voice professionally) that could be applied to any accent of any language. This year, we had 29 participants - the largest group we’ve ever had! We covered the philosophy behind KTS, vocal anatomy, the physical actions of speech sounds, descriptive phonetics, and the skills of adjusting linguistic detail in speech. Teaching these workshops always teaches me, and I’m grateful to everyone who joined us.
Here we are gurning:
THE WOLVES by Sarah DeLappe starts performances tonight at Connecticut Repertory Theatre. This is the second time that I’ve directed this play, and it’s a joyful challenge to work on. This is my first time directing at CRT, and I’m immensely proud of the work that my student actors and designers have done. Performances run through November 3rd at the Studio Theatre on UConn’s campus in Storrs, CT. Click here for more info and tickets.
My next project is in performances at the Westport Country Playhouse in CT. It’s the second production of a new play by Lynn Nottage called MLIMA’S TALE, and it’s directed by WCP Artistic Director Mark Lamos. The play follows what happens to the tusks of a 50-year-old elephant who is killed by poachers. It’s a devastating story that draws direct parallels between the black market ivory trade and the enslavement of African people throughout history. Performances run through October 19th, and you can find more info and tickets here.
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks in Orlando and NYC for voice and speech-related events. The Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA) held its annual conference in Orlando in early August, and I co-presented with KTS Teacher Jeremy Sortore a workshop on Knight-Thompson Speechwork’s approach of using oral or vocal tract posture in learning an accent. We found some arbitrary oral postures through gurning and then used some vowel sounds to find our way into the postures of accents that exist in the world. It was great fun, and I always enjoy teaching with Jeremy.
After the VASTA conference, I traveled to New York city to help facilitate the KTS workshop, Experiencing Accents, with KTS Co-Founder Phil Thompson. Experiencing Accents is a six-day workshop on the skills of accent acquisition (including oral posture!), and we had a wonderful group of participants who dove head-first into an empathetic way of listening to and analyzing different accents. Here is a photo of us gurning on the last day of the workshop:
The last mainstage show of the 2019 Colorado Shakespeare Festival season starts performances tomorrow.
KING CHARLES III, a “future history play” by Mike Bartlett and directed by Kevin Rich, imagines what might happen when Queen Elizabeth II passes away and Prince Charles finally inherits the throne of England. It’s a modern-day Shakespearean play, written in iambic pentameter and including allusions to several of Shakespeare’s own plays. And there are accents!
Performances run July 19th through August 11th at the University Theatre on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus. You can find more info and tickets here.
I’m spending much of the summer in Boulder, CO, as a Voice/Text/Dialect coach for the indoor shows at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. It’s been a delight to spend my time working on Shakespeare’s language with a lovely group of artists and also exploring the mountains around Boulder.
The first indoor show of the season, AS YOU LIKE IT directed and adapted by Carolyn Howarth, starts performances tonight. It’s a beautiful production with original songs by Sam Misner (of Misner and Smith) that will stay with you long after the show. Performances run through August 10th at the University Theatre (on the University of CO, Boulder, campus). Tickets and more information here.
I had the opportunity to be on the TV show Inside Edition this week. They did a segment on Elizabeth Holmes’ voice, and I talked a bit about why and how I thought she might have altered her voice. I also patterned her voice a bit and got to work with a friend of mine, White Horse Theater Company Managing Director Vanessa Bombardieri, on finding easier access to her lower pitch range. It was a great experience, and you can watch the segment here.
My latest project started performances last week at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre in Storrs, CT. IF WE WERE BIRDS by Erin Shields and directed by Helene Kvale is a re-telling of the story of Procne and Philomela, two sisters and princesses of Athens. After Procne is married to Tereus of Thrace, he captures and assaults Philomela. After taking revenge on Tereus, the sisters and he are transformed by the gods into birds. This telling of the story threads in tales of modern-day women who were assaulted in contemporary wars and genocides. It’s both beautiful and harrowing. Performances run through Sunday, April 7th. Tickets and more info can be found here.
Knight-Thompson Speechwork Co-Founder Phil Thompson and I will be offering the KTS workshop, Experiencing Accents, in NYC August 8th-15th, and registration is open!
Experiencing Accents is a six-day workshop (August 10th & 11th will be days off) in the skills of accent acquisition, including vocal tract posture, prosody, and the use of narrow transcription to describe characteristic sounds. We will cover a couple of sample accents as a group, and each participant will prepare their own accent research to present to the group by the end of the workshop.
Join us! More information is available on my Workshops page and on the Knight-Thompson Speechwork website.
My latest project started performances on Thursday, February 28th, at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre in Storrs, CT. THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD by Rupert Holmes and directed by Paul Mullins runs through Sunday, March 10th. It’s a delightfully light-hearted whodunnit musical based on Charles Dickens’ last, unfinished novel. What was his intention for the character of Edwin Drood? Was he in fact murdered? And who did it? You, the audience, gets to decide based on clues dropped throughout the night. Tickets and more info available here.
My next project starts previews at the Cleveland Play House tonight. The play is Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, and it’s directed by Adam Immerwahr. It’s a light-hearted, action-packed telling of the myth with loads of accents - including accents of Nottinghamshire. The cast is wonderful, and the design is lush. If you’re near Cleveland, don’t miss it! Performances run through February 24th. More info and tickets are available here.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of co-teaching Experiencing Speech, the introductory Knight-Thompson Speechwork workshop, in NYC with fellow Certified KTS Teacher Eliza Simpson. We had a wonderful group of actors, teachers, coaches, and otherwise interested folks in the 6-day workshop. In a manner that mirrors language acquisition in humans, we covered anatomy, the physical actions of speech, every speech sound observed in every human language, descriptive phonetics, and the skills of adjusting linguistic detail in speech - all the while being experiential, playful, and rigorous in our exploration.
Here is some of the group at the end of our last day:
And here we are gurning:
And here’s a photo of Eliza and me after we took a journey through the empty consonant chart:
My next project is A Civil War Christmas by Paula Vogel and directed by Elizabeth VanDyke at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre in Storrs, CT. The play takes place on Christmas Eve, 1864, and follows the lives of many historical figures - and some invented - over the course of that one day. There are many different characters, and, as such, many different voices in the play - from Abraham Lincoln to John Wilkes Booth to Elizabeth Keckley to James Wormley.
Performances run November 29th through December 9th. Tickets and more info here.
I coached two shows that opened last week.
The first is GOOD CHILDREN by Tracy Thorne and directed by Michael Bradford at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre. It’s a new play that takes place in a world where language is dangerous and secrets abound. People disappear, and no one can do anything about it. The production runs through November 4th, and more information is here.
The second is CHARLEY’S AUNT by Brandon Thomas and directed by Joseph Discher at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. It’s a beautiful production of this rarely produced British farce - and the upper-crust RP accents contribute greatly to the hilarity! It runs through November 18th, and more information is here.
I am based in NYC & CT and am available for coaching anywhere via Zoom or other online platforms. Available to travel for project coaching.