 THEATRE METHODS 04
Workshop
Natalie Baker Shirer
Associate Professor, Speech and Phonetics
Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, Pittsburgh, PA.
DISTINCT, EFFICIENT AND PLEASING
Three Steps to Standard American English Dialect
Methodology for Drama Students
(applicable to other students)
I DISTINCT SPEECH 
1. Breathing Exercises “The Vocal Athlete” warmup. Participants should be dressed comfortably. There will be floor work and aerobic activity as well as stretches. Applying breath to voice. Text: Friends, Romans, Countrymen from Juliet Caesar. Handout .
2. Articulation Exercises and Drills. Participants in straight backed chairs. Handouts and drawings of moveable and immovable articulators. Handouts with Nightmare Song from Iolanthe (Gilbert and Sullivan) and Quite a Lotta Roman Terra Cotta from Barnum (Broadway musical).
3. Phonemic Awareness: The English language is inconveniently unphonetic, Handouts.(Equipment: drawing board or blackboard) Introducing: International Phonetic Alphabet : Precision with a symbol for a sound. Handouts.
4. Examples of the 15 Vowels, 5 so-called long Diphthongs, 5 always short Diphthongs and Consonants of Standard American Dialect. Handouts.
II EFFICIENT SPEECH
1. Consistency Drills for Vowels, Diphthongs, Consonants in phonetic order w/handouts.
2. Phrasing: Particpants will mark scripts to phrase for:breathing to end of phrase for purpose of refueling, dramatic effect, complete change of subject.. Handout text: I Would Rather be Ashes than Dust (Jack London) and They All Want to Play Hamlet (Carl Sandberg). Participants will deliver the material to the group.
III PLEASING SPEECH 
1. Use of Poetry to develop Musicality ( participants will mark scripts for pitch range, inflections and intonation patterns) Exercises to develop the range.
2. Intonation Patterns and Inflections pertaining to our 5 Degrees of Stress of American English, including the notation of Hermann Klinghardt 3. Marking Scripts by participants (Handouts: Constantly Risking Absurdity by Lawrence Ferlinghetti).
4. Presentation Participants will Constantly Risking Absurdity using their markings.
5. Voice Synthesis Software a tool for students understanding musicality . (Additional presentation of the “My True Voice Project” with Baker Shirer’s Methodology applying to economically disadvantaged African American Fifth Grade Students in three Pittsburgh, PA schools).
Professional Biography of Natalie Baker Shirer
Natalie Baker, actor, singer and dancer is professor of Speech and Phonetics at Carnegie Mellon University and was awarded the William H. and Frances B. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching in May 2001. At Carnegie Mellon, Ms. Baker teaches Speech and Phonetics as applied to Standard American English Dialect. She has produced an instructional audiotape: Distinct, Efficient and Pleasing: A Practice Tape of the Non-Regional Dialect of American English and an accompanying phonetics workbook for this course. Her other courses include Accents and Dialects for the Theatre, Voiceover (Broadcast) Acting and a community-based outreach course, My True Voice. Ms. Baker has held additional teaching positions: CMU/Moscow Art Theatre Graduate Acting Program, West Virginia University Graduate and Undergraduate Theatre Program, the University of Pittsburgh Graduate Theatre Program, the West Virginia Governor’s School, the West Virginia Summer Institute of Theatre Educators.
Ms. Baker received a BFA in Drama from Carnegie Mellon, where she studied Speech and Phonetics intensively with Edith W. Skinner, and an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy, from the University of Pittsburgh.
Natalie Baker is currently, in addition to her teaching schedule, working with research scientists at Cepstral, LLC to adapt technical discrimination software to help students improve speaking skills. This software is being tested in her community based outreach course for sophomore students, who teach distinct speech to disadvantaged children. The My True Voice Project is an outcome of this course in partnership with the Extra Mile Education Foundation. It combines the teaching of pronunciation with an exploration of poetry and the use of interactive software. Natalie Baker’s paper on this project was presented at InSTIL2000 in Dundee, Scotland. My True Voice is supported by Carnegie Mellon University, the Grable Foundation, Buhl Foundation, Eden Hall Foundation and the Gumberg Family Foundation...
Ms. Baker is an actor who has performed on Broadway and theatres across the United States and Canada. As a media spokesperson she has voiced thousands of radio and television commercials and industrials internationally as well as throughout the United States. CD-ROM performance credits include Hell with Dennis Hopper, Ripper, with Christopher Walken and Burgess Meredith, Spiderman, The Venom Factor and The Sinister Six. She was the Executive Producer of Voices Over Pittsburgh, featuring eighty-eight of Pittsburgh’s finest voiceover actors... Natalie narrated the Buhl Science Center presentation of Women Light up the Sky, continues to be broadcast in fifty-six countries throughout the world... Voice and Dialect Coaching includes the feature film, Diabolique, with Sharon Stone. As voice and dialect coach for Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre for the past six years, she has worked on Major Barbara, which was presented at the Galway Festival 2003 and this summer she has coached dialects and accents for Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance and Stoppard’s Travesties.
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