"Wha' a lo ' a' bovaa!"

Hilary Norris, based in Wellington, provides effective and engaging coaching enabling actors to master accents and all clients to communicate with clarity and confidence. We were fortunate to have Hilary come work with our Year 13 drama students on their voice work for Harold Pinter's plays, The Dumb Waiter, and The Caretaker,  an important part of their upcoming techniques performance assessment.

Born in Oxford, UK, Hilary moved to New Zealand in the early 1970s, where she has been employed as a professional actor, director and teacher ever since. Having acted and directed in most of the country’s professional theatres, she has also been seen in television drama and international feature films such as The Hobbit and Light Between Oceans. She has been a voice artist for RNZ National, voiced advertisements and narrated books. For the last 25 years, she has also taught communication skills for academics, lawyers and health professionals, including running workshops on vocal and communication skills. In addition, she has also coached numerous theatre and film actors in voice and accent skills for more than 10 years. 

Year 13 students had this to say about their wonderful session with Hilary:

• The masterclass was extremely helpful and a great insight to help with English accents
  
• It was good to be able to hear someone else's accent so that I could base my own one on it and she was very happy to help pronunciation and other aspects
  
• It was very helpful to have someone who had lived in Britain for some time who could give recommendations on the different types of accents as well as point out when we had switched accents
  
• Amazing! She had come prepared with exercise to help us pronounce the vowels correctly and it was awesome to hear the accent itself in front of us and she was so helpful giving us tips and listening to our performances! 11/10