Voice, speech and dialect coach and educator, Deborah Hecht, and voice teacher and longtime former A.C.T. faculty member, Jeff Crockett, join The Actors Center’s Resident Company in December for a series of artist development workshops focusing on accents, dialects, and embodied presence.
Jeff Crockett was Head of Voice at The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for 22 years. He was resident voice coach at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis. Other coaching credits include: Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Mixed Blood, Theatre Manoeuvres (London), Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Word for Word and Shotgun Players, and with Play On Shakespeare and The Public in New York.
He was a regular guest faculty member at l’Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio D’Amico” in Rome for 11 years. Also in Italy, he taught at Prima del Teatro, San Miniato and Teatro Due in Parma. He has been a guest teacher at Columbia, DePaul University, the University of Maryland, Stanford, Classic Stage Company and Chautauqua Theater Company. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at NYU.
He trained at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where he received an Advanced Diploma in Voice Studies (Distinction). He is certified to teach the FM Alexander Technique and is a certified practitioner of Middendorf Breathwork. His article on Middendorf Breathwork, published in the Voice and Speech Review, has become a chapter in the book, Vocal Traditions: Training in the Performing Arts.
Deborah Hecht is an internationally known voice, speech and dialects coach. On Broadway she has coached 99 productions including The Great Gatsby, Sweeney Todd, The Ferryman, Hangmen, and the original and recent productions of Angels in America. Complete list at iBdb.com. Off-Broadway her coaching has been heard in hundreds of productions at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Signature, MCC, Classic Stage Company, New York Theatre Workshop, and more. Deborah has coached shows in England at the National and the RSC. Film and TV work includes Moana, We Were the Lucky Ones, Tokyo Vice, and many others. Actors she has taught and/or worked with include Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance, Marisa Tomei, Andre Holland, Patrick Stewart, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Michelle Williams, Sterling K. Brown and many others. She has taught voice and speech, dialects, and Shakespeare text at Juilliard, NYU Graduate Acting, the Yale School of Drama, ACT in San Francisco, and UNC Chapel Hill. She also taught voice at The Freedom Theatre in the West Bank.
