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My approach to dialect coaching is all about individualization. I love exploring the connection between the body, the character, and the dialect. My goal is for the actor to feel free and natural in the voice of the character.

I do this with physical work to incorporate the accent into the body. I love teaching actors techniques which free them to play when first approaching an accent.

The next step in learning a dialect is listening. I provide many different listening sources, and listen along with the actor to create a framework for what they’re hearing.

The final step is physical familiarity. I teach actors to treat their vocal tools as any other muscle, and sentences as a kind of free choreography. Once the muscles are familiar with the connections and transitions of an accent’s speech, the actor will feel comfortable and free. I tailor warm ups and exercises at every stage of the process to specify our work.

My linguistic background helps me listen to and break down any voice or accent, and my teaching experience helps me communicate the information in an unintimidating way which feels achievable. Let's get to work!

Testimonials

It was a joy working with Naomi - she can pivot effortlessly between the macro and the micro, always bringing an understanding of psychology to dialect training - vital for building a character. She brings such commitment and passion to what she does - you feel inspired when you're working with her.
- Felicity Jones
Naomi’s approach is thorough, vigilant and fastidious without being tedious. The number of nuanced notes given with scalpel-precision were astounding and only ever given in a thoughtful and bolstering way. Naomi was able to be flexible in her approach, tailoring the process on what felt like an individual basis, a mix of phonetics, speech, analysis and a huge sense of play.
- Billy Howle
I worked with Naomi Todd, who is the voice coach and dialect coach on The Wheel Of Time. She is and continues to be a big, big help for me in terms of, you know, the hours are long and I have to stay in that character or stay in that voice for long hours. It helped when she was there to make sure I didn’t slip up or anything like that.
- Hammed Animashaun