Paul Meier

Trust and communication in the director/voice coach collaboration: a case study of Much Ado About Nothing at the University of Kansas

Having staged well over 100 productions at such institutions as the Alabama and Oregon Shakespeare Festivals, Hollis is especially adept at collaborating with voice coaches on classical texts. His comment likewise indicates that acting and voice work are linked, especially when performing Shakespeare, in which case a director would do well to have a trusted and communicative voice and text expert at her/his side. The intelligibility of the actors and manifestation of their speaking as action is the responsibility of both the director and voice coach. In email conversation with Zazzali, from 15 April 2014, Andrew Wade of the Royal Shakespeare Company argues that the “willingness to work as a team” is crucial to this relationship. While acknowledging that he “must in all things support the vision of the director,” Wade contends that the “text coach is something of an acting coach as well,” who works in concert with the director to “help the actors in their journey to realize the play.” This point is likewise underscored by the venerable Cecily Berry, who locates “discovery” as quintessential to the “mutual collaboration with [the] actor and director that defines the art of the vocal director” (Quoted in Watson 2001, 198). Via email to Zazzali on 23 June 2014, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s vocal director, Rebecca Clark, stresses the importance of “being with a production from beginning to end” while “taking the attention and time to develop trust” with a director. The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s Kara Tsiaperas echoes this claim in an interview with Zazzali from 20 May 2014:

R and its Articulation

cialists and teachers of English as a second language () in recommending preferred/desirable/possible locutions to their clients, and in fully notating observed practices in . As voice and speech trainers, it seemed to the authors of this paper that this problematic phonetic class deserved closer scrutiny, with a view to more comprehensively and meticulously advising our clients in the varieties of r-type challenges in English. We and many of our colleagues, while not necessarily credentialed phoneticians, have a deep interest in and affinity for phonetics and linguistics. In our work we teach English language dialects and foreign language accents to actors; we train them in stage speech (dealing with the sometimes vexed question of a “standard” pronunciation); and our -and English-speaking clients with foreign, regional, or ethnic accents charge us with the task of “improving” their speech, or “reducing” their accent. Deepening our understanding of the complexities of rhotics, and improving our ability to talk to our theatre voice colleagues about them, is what we hope to achieve in this paper.

Peer-reviewed Article Vocal Clarity in the Outdoor Theatre

Kate Foy (stage name Kate Wilson) has been working in professional theatre for 30 years as actor and director with some of Australias leading performance organisations, including Queensland Theatre Company, New England Theatre Company and the ABC; in the US with Kennedy Theatre in Honolulu. Ph.D. from University of Hawaii: doctoral dissertation researched developments in contemporary Australian theatre. Since 1987, Head of Department of Theatre and head of voice and speech program at the conservatory actor-training program, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba. Continues to work as a voice over artist and has supplied the voice for many corporate and educational videos.