Sidebar – Experiencing Speech

These workshops are now modeling the essence of Dudley Knight’s acuity, humor, and passion, through play that leads to skill. Brilliant, huge fun, and vitally important work.

I had read Speaking With Skill several times, but this workshop opened it up to me as a teaching tool and textbook in a more profound way.

The Knight-Thompson Speech workshops changed the way I teach speech and coach accents. Approaching speech from a broad global perspective has allowed me and my students to hear and execute speech sounds with more accuracy. This work raised the bar for my teaching and brought my coaching work an unparalleled level of detail. It has also offered me another way to teach speech in a way that is inclusive rather than exclusive.

My first encounter with KTS – Experiencing Speech – fundamentally changed my understanding of speech training and also shifted my course as a speech teacher-in-training. I went from relying on sound to relying on action, which has proved to be a much more efficient and accurate way to teach and to learn – and to connect speechwork to acting. I also went from laboring under the notion that there is a good way to speak onstage to celebrating all possible accents and pronunciation patterns. KTS made speechwork fun for me!

Experiencing Speech brought logic and a fresh perspective to actor speech training through engaging lectures and discussions as well as challenging exercises.