Master Class

In the summer of 2019, Delaware Theatre Company’s “Summer On Stage-Stage 2” theatre camp invited me to teach a “Master Class” in voice acting. What I’ve learned over the years of giving talks, serving on “Career Day” panels and teaching classes, is that, in spite of the fact that I literally talk for a living, the key to a successful talk is mostly…letting THEM talk.

Unless you’re teaching a multi-hour class and/or charging money, it doesn’t do much good to get into the weeds of vocal technique, character development, mic placement, room ambience or what equipment you need. Once you’ve introduced yourself and given a brief outline of what you do and how you got into the field, if you’ve only got an hour or so, it’s best to go right to, “This is what I sound like,” or “This is one you might have heard.”

Then, because few people even know voice acting is a job, and lots of people think, “I can do this, how hard can it be?” you’ll have plenty of volunteers who’ll want to strap on a pair of headphones and hear how they sound.

Ideally, it’s great to have the ability to record and play back the students’ attempts at reading into a mic. But just the sensation of listening to oneself through headphones is interesting enough to students, even if you can’t record them and play back the results.

If you’re running a class, make sure you bring a variety of scripts; a commercial or two, something uptempo and then quiet, maybe a character voice. Because I do a lot of work in the medical/pharma space, I always bring a script that has some challenging medical terminology or unpronounceable medicine name, just to let students know it’s not as easy as it looks. And I give each student at least two “takes” and give a little feedback after the first take, so they can adjust their approach.

By the time every one who wants to read HAS read, you’re pretty much finished with the class. If there’s time, follow-up questions at the end are usually the best. Students now have a context in which to frame a question. The class I did last summer was made up of teenage theatre kids, and although most hadn’t thought of voice acting as a career, if at all, most of them had skills that translated well to the craft. After the class, one student evaluated it like this: “Voice-over class was my favorite class this year. I had never experienced or done much research into voice acting, but the workshop really opened my eyes.” Mission accomplished.

“Masters of The Dark Arts"

Just before the 2016 election, a young producer from NBC News had been googling around the inter webs and found an NPR interview about voice actors who get hired to narrate those “spooky” attack ads. Not sure why, but NPR reached out to me and Scott Sanders in 2006. Scott had been known in political circles for years as the “King of the Attack Ad,” and I had done my share, but not nearly as many, or with as many high profile candidates as had Scott. Maybe it was because we are both in Philadelphia, and a sizable amount of campaigns are recorded here. For whatever reason, we were both interviewed in 2006 and again in 2008 for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” by Melissa Block. Here’s how it sounded (right).

Esquire Magazine heard it, and interviewed us for their website as well.

Flash-forward 10 years, to the young NBC producer, who called me and asked for an on-camera interview along with Scott. Only problem was, Scott had by now retired. Lucky for them, Grace Gonglewski, also from Philadelphia, had become one of the top female voice actors in the political space, and was the voice of an independent PAC that was running ads for Hillary Clinton nationwide.

So just a few weeks before election day, we sat for an on-camera interview at Baker Sound in Center City Philadelphia. About 10 seconds of the interview actually made it into the final piece, which ran on “The Today Show Sunday,” hosted by Willie Geist. But Hallie Jackson called me a “Master of the Dark Arts,” so that’s something, I guess.