Any actor who needs to nail a dialect or hone their speech skills calls Denise Woods, a speech and voice coach and the recipient of the Backstage Vanguard Award for Exceptional Achievement in Arts and Communications. A former faculty member of the California Institute of the Arts and the Juilliard School, Woods has trained the likes of Mahershala Ali, Don Cheadle, David Oyelowo, Idris Elba, Will Smith, and Audra McDonald. Here, she offers advice on how to find your voice ahead of an audition and after you’ve booked a role.
You began your career as an actor and singer. How did you make the pivot to speech and voice coaching?
I was doing the Canadian production of a Broadway show. Juilliard called and asked if I would be interested in joining the faculty, and I said absolutely. They hired me, and I literally got the job thinking I was going to be an acting teacher. They said, “We forgot to tell you: You’re going to be joining the voice and speech department. You were an incredible voice and speech student when you were here.” And I was! Voice and speech was my thing because of my singing training. I got it, I understood it, it resonated with me. A few years later, someone called and said, “We’ve got this production Off-Broadway, and the actress can’t be heard. Is it possible to come down and coach?” One coaching job led to another coaching job. My first film coaching job was Taye Diggs in “How Stella Got Her Groove Back”—his Jamaican accent. I stayed at Juilliard for eight years teaching voice and speech, and CalArts called in 2000 to offer me a position to head their speech department. I stayed on [the] faculty there for 12 years, and then retired in 2012 to devote my entire career to film coaching and individual coaching.
What advice would you give to actors regarding voice and speech?
The first thing is relaxation: how to understand your instrument so that you operate from an energized but relaxed instrument. I encourage them to take movement classes, to take the Alexander Technique, to be in tune with your body, with your instrument, so you know how it works and so you know exactly how much energy is needed to produce a sound. The more tense you are, the more constricted the voice becomes.
An Acting Teacher’s Take on What the Alexander Technique Can Do for YouVoice and speech are so personal and intimate. How are you able to tap into a wide swath of characters and experiences?
I always start with having them tell me a story from their childhood. Those stories from that time are filled with emotion. I can hear their true, authentic selves when they start talking about something that happened in their lives when they were 10 or 11. The goal is to put that type of expression, that type of authentic, visceral storytelling in every story. Then we talk about character: backstory of the character, relationships that the character has, where they grew up. I call what I do a little bit of speech and voice and a lot of anthropology and sociology. We are the sum total of our history, of where we come from and who has informed our lives. All of that informs our voices.
What advice do you have for actors who are preparing for an audition when it comes to voice and speech?
A lot of times, you just get sides and you don’t get the script. If you’re lucky, you get a breakdown [and] they tell you what the person is. Do as much research as you possibly can. Do a little research, and put in a little something extra that seems like it’s in the context of what they’re looking for.
“We are the sum total of our history, of where we come from and who has informed our lives.”
How should actors go about doing this research?
If you have a sense of how the person might sound, go to YouTube. YouTube is the best research tool for me. I don’t want movies of actors that are doing a dialect. I go to the source. I find the real people who sound like that from this particular place. If you have a feeling that these [characters] are from the Midwest, where? What city? Specificity is key.
Is there a secret to approaching voice acting that’s different from live action?
For voice acting, the imagination has to be broader, bigger, more expansive, more detailed. You can’t just see blue—you’ve got to see turquoise. You don’t have the luxury of people seeing your face. The imagination should come first. The imagination should affect what you do in the booth with your body. Then, that affects the voice. It’s a ripple effect.
What advice would you give your younger self?
There is no expiration date. Slow down. Breathe. Live life to the fullest. You are not your career. You’ll get there. What I have done in my 30s and 40s—I became an expert at something, so by the time I was in my 50s and 60s, people come to me as the expert.
What performance should every actor see and why?
I would say Cicely Tyson in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” The depth of her performance was just a tour de force.
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