Barbara Houseman's career as a voice and acting coach and theatre director spans nearly forty years. She trained as a voice teacher at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and as a theatre director at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Having worked alongside Cicely Berry in the Voice Department at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Tim Supple invited her to become Associate Director at The Young Vic. On leaving she wrote 'Finding Your Voice' and 'Tackling Text'.
Since then she has worked extensively as a voice and text coach in the West End including shows including The Ferryman, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Equus (The Gielgud). She's been resident voice and text coach at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park since 2009 and was Season Associate Director since 2012.
Individual clients include Jane Asher, Kenneth Branagh, Jessie Buckley, Omid Djalili, Dynamo, Richard Fairbrass, Jerry Hall, Lenny Henry, Nicholas Hoult, Karl Hyde, Patrick Kielty, Jude Law, Clive Owen, Daniel Radcliffe, Scarlett Strallen, Will Young
You can watch out Q&A with Barbara here.
Barbara discussed a number of things, particularly mindfulness and its usefulness in terms of our own well-being.
Following on from that, Barbara sent on some information about Breathing both for calm & health:
‘Research suggests that Coherent Breathing - breathing in for a count of 6 and then out for a count of 6 - matches the cardiorespiratory rhythm and so helps us to calm. They suggest doing it for 20 mins a day. I have The Breathing App that does both counting or sound so you can just follow it. I’m doing it every morning and finding it useful. For more information go to coherentbreathing.com or heart math.org’
As well as this, in this challenging times, please do consider the following resources:
Industry Minds – Offer free counselling and numerous webinar episodes along with their fantastic podcast. You can find them on Twitter
Applause for Thought – Also offer a number of talks, Q&A’s and webinars, again, they are on Twitter
Barbara also has two fantastic online video/masterclasses in Voice and Text, these can be watched on Digital Theatre or through her own website: https://www.barbarahouseman.com
