Louis Colaianni

Louis Colaianni (born April 29, 1959 in Paterson, New Jersey) is a prominent voice, speech, dialect and text director in the professional theatre, and teacher of voice, speech, phonetics, acting and Shakespeare performance. He has taught in many actor-training programs and served as voice and text coach for productions at theatres throughout the United States, including, The Labyrinth Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Shakespeare Festival of St Louis, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespearean Festival (2008) and Seattle Repertory Theatre. He is the author of several books including, "The Joy of Phonetics and Accents", "Shakespeare's Names: A New Pronouncing Dictionary", "Bringing Speech to Life" (with Claudia Anderson), and "How to Speak Shakespeare" (with Cal Pritner). He was a tenured, associate professor at University of Missouri–Kansas City. Louis Colaianni has given workshops internationally. He invented the Phonetic Pillows approach to Phonetics and Stage Accents which is used by many actor training programs. He studied voice with Kristin Linklater and is a Designated Linklater Teacher.

Louis Colaianni's father, James F. Colaianni, is an author, theologian and activist who wrote "Married Priests and Married Nuns" and "The Catholic Left", and was editor of "Ramparts".

References

* "Marquis Who's Who in the World, Millennium Edition" 1999. Colaianni, Louis, biographee.
* "Marquis Who's Who in America" 2001. Colaianni, Louis, biographee.
* Warren, Michael. "Shakespeare: Life, Language and Linguistics, Textual Studies, and the Canon". Fairview, NC: Pegasus Press. 2002. Index, Colaianni, Louis, entry 81, page 39.
* Kopf, Ginny. "The Dialect Handbook". Orlando, Florida: Voiceprint Publishing. 1997. Index, Colaianni, Louis, pages 64, 71, 102.