Anne Whitaker is a California transplant now based in London. Her work as a voice coach spans professional coaching and conservatoire training programs including The Royal Central School for Speech and Drama, Mountview, and The Globe. As a voice coach she is always working to improve her practice through interdisciplinary research. Her specialism is in prosody, or the musicality of language. She is currently working with Professor Beatrice Szczepek Reed at King’s College London to devise exercises for actors that help them understand and achieve in performance what linguists have observed about prosody in natural talk and conversation. Anne's other project is about prosody in verse text, which she is working on with PhD Candidate Jennifer Grober, King's College/Shakespeare Centre London. Their collaboration aims to use recent findings in early-modern verse studies to create a more embodied approach to teaching and performing Shakespeare. Recent theatre credits include Matilda (Cambridge Theatre), Shooting Hedda Gabler (Rose Theatre), and Oklahoma! (Wyndhams Theatre). Recent film credits include Back in Action! (Netflix), We Were the Lucky Ones (Hulu), and Wheel of Time (Amazon).

Past Short Courses

The Responsive Voice: A dialogic approach to actor voice training
Tuesday 1st October 2024
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)

The Responsive Voice: A dialogic approach to actor voice training

Beatrice Szczepek Reed
Anne Whitaker

This course will apply key insights from research on natural conversation to voice and dialect coaching for actors. Current actor voice training approaches the voice as the product of an individual speaker.