Macbeth

What does a voice coach do?

As the job description suggests I principally look after the actors’ voices. Great story telling is the major feature of the Globe space, and because an actor is actually aware of seeing his or her audience their voice suddenly becomes amplified, which is exercised by the nature of the Globe’s unique acoustic.

While there are outside noises (and inside noises!) that are challenging at the Globe, when a great storyteller-actor is being very precise he or she is able to command the attention of the listener in a very magnetic way that the outside noises seem to cease to exist. Even if aeroplanes go over, everybody knows there’s an aeroplane, so you sort of ‘forgive’ the actor if he or she pauses in that moment, rather than forcing the voice to shout over the top.

These are some of the considerations of the voice coach but primarily my role is to connect the actors with their bodies, so that they actually feel where their voices are within their bodies. The voice is very physical, and right at the core of communicating the way we feel, exercising the possibility of clear thinking, clear action and creating emotional investment in character life, all of which the actor needs to employ.