I think of my work in 2 broad buckets.

My actors/students and my Corporate Working Professionals. In the corporate world, it ranges from CEOs to lawyers, politicians, civil servants, academic professors, yoga/pilates teachers and social workers.

My acting students/Professional Actors are from Lasalle College of the Arts of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts or I work with various theater companies such as Wild Rice, Pangdemonium, The Theatre Practice during production on voice/accent work or I work privately with actors to rehearse and learn new accents.

I essentially teach the same things, but I think I have different modes or languages that I use to assist and assess my students/clients.

For my students in a semester, I have the benefit of a length of time where I can build a relationship and we have a year to work on skills and application.

For my corporate clients, time is precious so we focus on our needs and I encourage practice time outside of class so that we can accelerate growth.

The practice of teaching different people in different spaces over the years has taught me to be flexible and adaptable because I always teach who’s in front of me.

This varies from each individual, but it typically involves 3 stages. Each session could be one of these components or all, and we could explore these over weeks or months depending on your curiosities and needs.

• Destructuring (Breathwork and Body Awareness)
• Restructuring (Voice Support and Connection)
• Presence/Play (Application in Various Spaces)

I can’t speak to what is involved in other training programs and what their curriculum or training is influenced by. I think whilst doing your research, it’s important to find out what their training/pedagogy is informed by. Who are the trainers and what their experience is. I always say, just because they’ve been doing a certain thing for a while, doesn’t mean they know how to TEACH it.

Voice is primal, natural and no one taught us how to do it, because we’ve been doing it from the moment we emerged into this world. What I’m essentially teaching you, is awareness. How to become aware of the habits, the feeling, the muscle movement and connections that can be made in order to affect a change in sound.

Thank you and I’m very flattered, but no. There is no need to speak/sound like anyone else but yourself. When my clients say this to me, what I’m hearing is a disconnect between their sense of self vs what they are hearing/seeing on playback. (recorded audio/visual) This is also very normal. By using better practices, we can start to deepen our relationship with our recorded selves and strengthen our confidence in how we appear to the world.

I think it’s far more interesting to develop a sense of flexibility and curiosity about our voice. Can we build range in tone, tempo, pitch, muscularity, emotions? Can we build awareness around how we sound in space? What is shifting and changing in our bodies and movements in breath? This is something tangible we can work on, rather than think of a ‘target voice’ that isn’t yours.