About

DAVID CAREY

A voice teacher for over 40 years, David has worked nationally and internationally within higher education and the professional theatre.

David began his teaching career at Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh where he was a Lecturer in Voice and Speech for five years. David left Edinburgh in 1982 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company as Assistant Voice Director, working under Cicely Berry and alongside Patsy Rodenburg.

The four years that David spent at the RSC were a rich period in the company’s history. Judi Dench, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Kenneth Branagh, Brian Cox, Derek Jacobi, Alan Rickman and Antony Sher were all members of the acting company. In addition to Joint Artistic Directors, Terry Hands and Trevor Nunn, other directors included Bill Alexander, John Barton, Ron Daniels, Howard Davies, Barry Kyle and Adrian Noble. Notable plays and productions of this period with which David was associated were Richard III with Antony Sher, Henry V with Kenneth Branagh, and the world premieres of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Howard Barker’s The Castle. David’s understanding of voice, text and acting was deeply informed by the opportunity to observe these actors and directors, but most especially by the experience of watching Cicely Berry’s unique collaboration with these theatre artists. Her passion for language and its ability to express the human experience, particularly through the work of Shakespeare, left an indelible impression on David and continues to influence his work to this day.

David left the RSC to become Course Leader of the renowned Voice Studies course at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1986, and in a 17 year tenure was responsible for training over 200 voice teachers from around the world. Many of the course’s graduates from this period are now working near or at the top of their profession including the heads of voice at the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Ontario Festival Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Other graduates have gone on to be successfully employed in HE drama training institutions throughout the world, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Holland and Denmark. Through the course at CSSD, David introduced a generation of voice teachers to the work of a wide range of practitioners, including Frankie Armstrong, Kevin Crawford, Meribeth Bunch Dayme, Catherine Fitzmaurice, Nadine George, Barbara Houseman, Gillyanne Kayes, Christina Shewell, Andrew Wade, and Joanna Weir-Ouston.

David was a senior voice tutor on the B.A. Acting course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 2003-2010, and since 2011 he has been a resident voice and text director with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also continued to coach regularly for the RSC, including the 2004 productions of Julius Caesar and Two Gentlemen of Verona, the world premieres of David Edgar’s Written on the Heart, James Fenton’s translation of The Orphan of Zhao and Tarell McCraney’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra. In 2007, he was voice coach on the Stratford Ontario Festival production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband.

David trained in Speech and Drama at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow and has degrees in English Language and Linguistics from both Edinburgh University and Reading University. In 2007, he was awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy of England in recognition of his contribution to voice teaching.

REBECCA CLARK CAREY

Rebecca has been working as a voice teacher and coach for the professional theatre in both the U.S. and the U.K. for twenty years. After completing a B.A. at Harvard University, Rebecca trained as an actress at the University of California at Irvine where her voice teacher was Dudley Knight. She worked professionally for several years at theatres including South Coast Repertory Theater, Cornerstone Theater Company, California Shakespeare Festival and Shakespeare Santa Cruz. She also toured extensively with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s education programme.

In 2000, Rebecca travelled to London to study voice at the Central School of Speech and Drama and was awarded an M.A. with distinction. On completion of her degree, Rebecca moved to Ashland, Oregon where she worked as an actor/teacher in the education department at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and assisted voice and text directors Scott Kaiser and Ursula Meyer. In the summer of 2003, Rebecca returned to England where she taught voice at the Central School of Speech and Drama, the Oxford School of Drama, and, for four years, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as a senior voice tutor on the B.A. Acting course. She freelances in the UK as a specialist in American accents and has worked as a coach on Tennessee Williams’ Spring Storm and Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon at the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton and their transfers to the Royal National Theatre in London. Since the 2011 OSF season she has been a resident voice and text director at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, becoming Head of Voice and Text in 2013. Other U.S. credits include Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and the 2014 Tony Award-winner All the Way at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts and on Broadway.