Singing Advice

Getting Actors to Sing

Voice teacher Roger Love has helped prepare Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon for "Walk the Line" and Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell for "Crazy Heart," among many others.

Just Breathe

"You can't control what people are going to think of your audition, but you can control everything else."

Singing Their Hearts Out

"The challenge in doing a Stephen Sondheim show is that the bar is raised so high," says Aaron Lazar, who plays the buffoonish Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm in the Broadway revival of "A Little Night Music."

The Truth in the Text

Lester Shane made his stage debut as "the littlest Pepper of them all" in a Cleveland production of "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew," and he's been acting ever since.

Wesla's More

"Kids don't want to hear about me," Wesla Whitfield says of the many students she's been teaching for the past four years at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, Calif.

Creating a Community

Amy Stoller, a 'dialect designer,' discusses finding the sound of an Irish village for the Off-Broadway hit 'Wife to James Whelan.'