I am a specialist in the speaking voice
and the spoken word. I am also a
language and accents/dialects consultant, as well as a professional classical
and contemporary actor of stage and film.
Acting is storytelling; so what story am I telling? I am a creative artist who practices and instructs in the art of living out loud, contributing a voice to others in the world, particularly through language and the classics. I work from real-world experience and through collaboration. At the heart of my calling, I advance live performance through the voice. I am committed to building the new artist working with both current and older forms, not merely replicating old procedures of performance.
I want my creative work on stage and in the classroom to be in response to the text, living, evocative and serving the performance--allowing classics to endure with the modern. As a practicing artist, I am honoring and respecting classical text and the modern by serving the language through interpretation to find what I as an actor am responding to and by finding new ways of connecting in this praxis. My responsibility as an actor is to explore and articulate what opportunities the language is offering me. As an artist, I am responsible for the following ideas and queries:
· How do I work with a thought?
· How do I listen and become aware through my body and the voice?
· How do I resonate with each word and examine the details of language to animate it?
· How do I engage with the character’s problem embedded in the text?
· How do I take language apart in rehearsal and put it all back together for my audience?
· How do I excite my listener with the language?
In acting I seek the dialogue (dia or two + logis or logics) arising from the act of questioning outward rather than requiring answers, calling for more voices to join in the dynamic play of language.
Text reveals. If I want my thoughts and feelings to be communicated, their vitality must come through my intention to be understood. Therefore, I must attend to my text to garner all there is to be understood. To reveal myself to an audience, I must have command of body, breath, voice and language. I make use of my whole self to hear all the possibilities of language that cues into character. Language tells me what’s really going on. Sounds lie with sense and word as essence; what comes out my mouth matters!
Language becomes more powerful with choice, clarity and eloquence. Being observant of the language is being part of an important conversation. Theatre can create a lasting dialogue long after a production closes; herein lies the power of the classics as we listen deeply to the scheme of spoken words. As an artist, I have control over the message I want to communicate or change: What is the artist of today responding to? What are the opportunities of language being offered on the page? My charge is to articulate these encounters.
In a primarily visual and physical society, the trend for the body to emote tends to become the actor’s aesthetic, for everything to be seen, felt and described. But more and more, our aural sense is being deprived an essential stimulation it craves in the sounds of words. Just as our eyes yearn for different shapes, colors and variety in spectacle, so do our ears yearn for the sounds, dynamics and images inhabiting the space of language.
I have resolutely observed from personal experience, mentorship and collaboration with highly esteemed voice and text coaches, directors, practitioners and professional actors, how classical theatre companies, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Shakespeare Theatre Company and The Guthrie Theater, prepare actors to speak Shakespeare and classical and contemporary texts. In the last five years, I have reaped the benefits of this training to form my own creed of how to hear, speak, vocalize and play the poetic texts of Shakespeare and other heightened language plays.
Rehearsal is a process of re-hearing one's words; not becoming tired of them but keeping interested to be rejuvenated hearing them again in some new way. Speaking becomes a conscious, pleasurable act when the actors fully commit to revealing themselves through the body and then vocally. Voice becomes the last elegant extension of the body in expressing thought and feeling. Craft requires repetition—I repeat and the deeper I can explore the text, the more I commit myself to stay in the act of creating, and the joy that comes from each trip into the text is different, pleasurable and worth taking. The performing experience of engaging the text rather than examining it from a distance makes the actor instantly present. Each sound is revealing a meaning in an actor’s text. The actor’s primary goal, if the play is to be heard, is to take the time to focus on each sound and feeling of the words. And that only comes from speaking the words not talking about the words. Scholars analyze the text, but as actors, we must embody and give voice to our texts, immersing ourselves in a closer aural and spoken connection to bring ideas, imagery and imagination alive in performance. In this committed act, I can perceive, respond, own and enjoy my language.
I became acutely aware very early in life of my desire to become an actor. I am grateful for my parents and early tutors who read aloud to me and helped me claim the power of words and stories that in turn led me to train and develop my voice, imagination and self-expression to become the artist I am today. Performing musicals and the poetry and prose of great playwrights unlocked in me the powerful thinking experienced through language, and guided me to directing Shakespeare’s plays, translating and interpreting other playwrights' texts, and devising and producing my own work. My voice and text work and the desire to teach others follow directly from the passion and skill I have as an actor. For me, acting and voice are not two separate realms; they bridge, unify and illumine my creative work as an artist. I live both.
Having found my voice in my formative years, all theatre training and teachers of excellence that followed and fed me in my passion to perform, particularly the classical canon of Shakespeare, have shaped and prepared me in my current tenure-track position. All my professional experiences, repertoire, immersion in language, storytelling and plays, and my exposure to many different ideas and methodologies have served me well through my years of regional performance and expertise in the field of acting and voice work. I have had the good fortune in my professional career to work onstage with highly respected international and regional actors and directors—Olivier, Tony and Obie Award-winning artists of excellence in the theatre world. Collaborating with such extraordinary artists has kept me sharp, hungry and committed to my artistry as actor and voice-verse professional.
Acting is storytelling; so what story am I telling? I am a creative artist who practices and instructs in the art of living out loud, contributing a voice to others in the world, particularly through language and the classics. I work from real-world experience and through collaboration. At the heart of my calling, I advance live performance through the voice. I am committed to building the new artist working with both current and older forms, not merely replicating old procedures of performance.
I want my creative work on stage and in the classroom to be in response to the text, living, evocative and serving the performance--allowing classics to endure with the modern. As a practicing artist, I am honoring and respecting classical text and the modern by serving the language through interpretation to find what I as an actor am responding to and by finding new ways of connecting in this praxis. My responsibility as an actor is to explore and articulate what opportunities the language is offering me. As an artist, I am responsible for the following ideas and queries:
· How do I work with a thought?
· How do I listen and become aware through my body and the voice?
· How do I resonate with each word and examine the details of language to animate it?
· How do I engage with the character’s problem embedded in the text?
· How do I take language apart in rehearsal and put it all back together for my audience?
· How do I excite my listener with the language?
In acting I seek the dialogue (dia or two + logis or logics) arising from the act of questioning outward rather than requiring answers, calling for more voices to join in the dynamic play of language.
Text reveals. If I want my thoughts and feelings to be communicated, their vitality must come through my intention to be understood. Therefore, I must attend to my text to garner all there is to be understood. To reveal myself to an audience, I must have command of body, breath, voice and language. I make use of my whole self to hear all the possibilities of language that cues into character. Language tells me what’s really going on. Sounds lie with sense and word as essence; what comes out my mouth matters!
Language becomes more powerful with choice, clarity and eloquence. Being observant of the language is being part of an important conversation. Theatre can create a lasting dialogue long after a production closes; herein lies the power of the classics as we listen deeply to the scheme of spoken words. As an artist, I have control over the message I want to communicate or change: What is the artist of today responding to? What are the opportunities of language being offered on the page? My charge is to articulate these encounters.
In a primarily visual and physical society, the trend for the body to emote tends to become the actor’s aesthetic, for everything to be seen, felt and described. But more and more, our aural sense is being deprived an essential stimulation it craves in the sounds of words. Just as our eyes yearn for different shapes, colors and variety in spectacle, so do our ears yearn for the sounds, dynamics and images inhabiting the space of language.
I have resolutely observed from personal experience, mentorship and collaboration with highly esteemed voice and text coaches, directors, practitioners and professional actors, how classical theatre companies, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Shakespeare Theatre Company and The Guthrie Theater, prepare actors to speak Shakespeare and classical and contemporary texts. In the last five years, I have reaped the benefits of this training to form my own creed of how to hear, speak, vocalize and play the poetic texts of Shakespeare and other heightened language plays.
Rehearsal is a process of re-hearing one's words; not becoming tired of them but keeping interested to be rejuvenated hearing them again in some new way. Speaking becomes a conscious, pleasurable act when the actors fully commit to revealing themselves through the body and then vocally. Voice becomes the last elegant extension of the body in expressing thought and feeling. Craft requires repetition—I repeat and the deeper I can explore the text, the more I commit myself to stay in the act of creating, and the joy that comes from each trip into the text is different, pleasurable and worth taking. The performing experience of engaging the text rather than examining it from a distance makes the actor instantly present. Each sound is revealing a meaning in an actor’s text. The actor’s primary goal, if the play is to be heard, is to take the time to focus on each sound and feeling of the words. And that only comes from speaking the words not talking about the words. Scholars analyze the text, but as actors, we must embody and give voice to our texts, immersing ourselves in a closer aural and spoken connection to bring ideas, imagery and imagination alive in performance. In this committed act, I can perceive, respond, own and enjoy my language.
I became acutely aware very early in life of my desire to become an actor. I am grateful for my parents and early tutors who read aloud to me and helped me claim the power of words and stories that in turn led me to train and develop my voice, imagination and self-expression to become the artist I am today. Performing musicals and the poetry and prose of great playwrights unlocked in me the powerful thinking experienced through language, and guided me to directing Shakespeare’s plays, translating and interpreting other playwrights' texts, and devising and producing my own work. My voice and text work and the desire to teach others follow directly from the passion and skill I have as an actor. For me, acting and voice are not two separate realms; they bridge, unify and illumine my creative work as an artist. I live both.
Having found my voice in my formative years, all theatre training and teachers of excellence that followed and fed me in my passion to perform, particularly the classical canon of Shakespeare, have shaped and prepared me in my current tenure-track position. All my professional experiences, repertoire, immersion in language, storytelling and plays, and my exposure to many different ideas and methodologies have served me well through my years of regional performance and expertise in the field of acting and voice work. I have had the good fortune in my professional career to work onstage with highly respected international and regional actors and directors—Olivier, Tony and Obie Award-winning artists of excellence in the theatre world. Collaborating with such extraordinary artists has kept me sharp, hungry and committed to my artistry as actor and voice-verse professional.