Dialect coaching
I am a huge nerd when it comes to language. When I was very small, my favourite film was My Fair Lady. I wanted to be Henry Higgins. All those vowels. All those consonants. And he could write them down? What were those symbols? I was amazed. You see, I grew up as a first generation Australian. Neither of my parents were born here, and none of my grandparents. When I was a child I had a strange hybrid of an accent thanks to all of the different voices I grew up amongst. I think being surrounded by different accents and dialects, and speaking unlike my peers, set me, very early on, on a path to obsession.
I was always a good mimic with a great ear for variations in speech and as a teenager I trained myself out of my weird hybrid accent (honestly, I was just sick of people asking me if I was Irish, or Canadian, or American, or Kiwi!). When I was offered a place at the University of Sydney it was inevitable that I would choose Linguistics as one of my majors. I learnt the International Phonetic Alphabet and Henry Higgins’s symbols all of a sudden made perfect sense. When I would listed to people speak I started seeing in my mind the symbols for the distinct sounds they were using.
I applied that knowledge to my own acting and voice work and now I offer that same nerdy enthusiasm to other actors who wish to improve their dialect work generally or prepare for a specific role.
Vocal coaching
As well as specifically dialect and accent work, I have extensive experience as a theatre performer, MC and professional vocalist. If you feel that your voice needs strengthening or softening or just something you can’t quite name, I can help get you to a place where you can walk out on stage and speak into a mic with absolute confidence that the audience will see nothing but a total professional.