Knight-Thompson Speech Work Analysis

471 Words1 Page

Dudley Knight was an American voice, speech, and dialect practitioner born in Rochester Minnesota July 1, 1939 and died in Newport Beach, California June of 2013. Knight first experienced theatre through Lawrence Olivier’s, Henry V film, which led to a lifelong love of theatre (IMDb.com). This love inspired Knight to eventually graduate from Yale School of Drama, and his co-found the Long Warf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Before Knight began his role as a voice coach he acted in film and on stage, including but not limited to: M*A*S*H*, The Candidate, and One is a Lonely Number, six seasons with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, as well as with the Globe Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse. Knight also spent 20 years teaching voice and speech …show more content…

Knight-Thompson Speech work, is a skills-based approach to voice and dialect training for performers that emphasizes physical actions which make speech. The Knight-Thompson Speech work method combines extensive examination of how vocal mechanisms work, along with playful experimentation to learn about and train the voice (ktspeechwork.com). At the center of this method, is intelligibility, which is described as the ability for a listener to understand the words that are said. This does not mean that the sound produced is beautiful or intellectual but rather, that every listener us able to understand the language that is produced easily. The idea behind this philosophy is that if the listener is able to clearly understand the basic level of communication, they will be free to pay attention to other messages such as body language, gesture, tone, etcetera (Knight). In order to achieve this goal of intelligibility, Knight-Thompson Speech work trains actors in developing precise physical skills for shaping sound into articulate speech. Knight believes that his speech work method is unique in that each actor will use the skills particular to their voice, which allows for actors to meet any requirement no matter the performance

Open Document