For the November 2021 episode of the podcast, Paul discusses the peculiarities of the English language with Arika Okrent, author of Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme.
Arika is also a linguist and author of In the Land of Invented Languages. She worked in a brain-research lab on her way to a Ph.D in psycholinguistics from the University of Chicago and now writes about language for publications including Mental Floss, The Week, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Science, Slate, and Aeon. For more information on Arika, visit http://arikaokrent.com.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
The topic for the January 2021 podcast is what Paul’s guest, Jan Gist, calls “Shakespeare’s Shapely Language.” Shapes is her term for literary or rhetorical tropes; she and Paul broaden the discussion to reflect on how such ancient devices figure in advertising, political oratory, and other forms of the spoken word today.
Jan Gist has been the voice, speech, and dialect coach for Old Globe productions on 89 shows and for 50 USD/Shiley MFA productions. She has coached at theatres around the country including Ahmanson Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., The American Shakespeare Center, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, San Diego Repertory, North Coast Repertory, Milwaukee Repertory, PlayMakers’ Repertory, Indiana Repertory, American Players Theatre, and Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company. She coached dialects for the film The Rosa ParksStory and recorded dozens of Books To Listen To.
She is an original member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA) and has presented at its conferences, as well as to Voice Foundation’s conferences. Gist has taught workshops at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama and the International Voice Teachers Exchange at the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia. She has been published in numerous VASTA journals. Chapters in books include an interview in Voice and Speech Training in the New Millennium: Conversations with Master Teachers, exercises in The Complete Voice And Speech Workout, and Yiddish, in Jerry Blunt’s More Stage Dialects. Most recently, her article “Voicing Poems”, including some of her own poems, was published in Voice and Speech Review. She is a professor in The Old Globe/USD Shiley Graduate Theatre Program.
This month’s podcast, for February 2019, focuses on releasing the power of the text. Paul’s guest is David Alan Stern, one of the longest-established and most popular publishers of dialect help for actors, and professor emeritus of the University of Connecticut. Paul and David discuss the language arts as they impact the spoken word in all its manifestations and delve into topics such as eloquence, emphasis, public speaking, oratory, recitation, rhetorical skills, verse speaking, and vocal variety.
Paul’s musings for the November 2018 podcast start with the old adage “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it,” and take off from there to cover sacred texts, profane politicians, and pumped-up actors.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
