Voice Work and the Acting Craft: Conversation with Georgina Onuorah

This episode is part of a series where I talk with actors I’ve worked with about how they incorporate voice work into their craft. Georgina Onuorah is a London-based actress, singer and dancer. Her professional debut was playing Alice Fitzwarren in Dick Whittington at the National Theatre and she is currently the alternate Cinderella in the West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella . She graduated from ArtsEd in 2020, where I was one of her voice and speech teachers. During our conversation, Georgina had some profound insights about how voice work has helped her find her authentic center as a performing artist. 

Themes that come up in the conversation are: 

• How voice work and warming up can give you something positive to focus on in the moment before an audition and help you present yourself more confidently in moments that matter— like introducing yourself in an audition 
• Georgina’s definition of voice work: a kind of centering— a centering in yourself so that you can fully bring yourself to the table. This includes a physical centering, a vocal centering and a feeling of centeredness in the psyche. 
• The difference between how Georgina feels about voice work now vs. what she thought it was going to be in her first voice class. There is a misconception about voice work (even among some voice teachers!) that it’s about “correcting” your voice or the way you speak. Now Georgina feels it’s much more about truly discovering your authentic self through your voice and even your vocal history. 
• How spoken voice work and singing voice work interlink
• Georgina’s experience working on the Olivier at the National Theatre in London— an infamously difficult stage to work on vocally 
• working with mics
• the value of using text work on songs rather than focusing solely on sounding good 
• the balancing act of the musical theatre performer between three disciplines and how voice work can compliment and work with those disciplines because breath is the unifying factor in each
• Georgina’s voice warm up and how it adapts to her day to day needs before a show

This one is a super interesting episode for professional actors, musical theatre performers and enthusiasts, actors in training, or anyone who is interested in what the craft of acting is all about.