Biography
Louis Colaianni is an acting, voice, speech and dialect coach in the professional theater. Most recently, he coached Common in the Broadway production of Between Riverside and Crazy and Manahatta at the Yale Repertory Theatre. For feature film he has coached Bill Murray in Hyde Park on Hudson and St. Vincent; Don Cheadle in Miles Ahead; America Ferrera in Cesar Chavez; Anna Gunn in Little Red Wagon; and Michael Gandolfini in The Many Saints of Newark. Broadway coaching includes Will Ferrell in You’re Welcome America and Madeleine Martin in August Osage County. For television he has coached Craig Roberts in Red Oaks on Amazon Prime, Hamish Linklater as Abraham Lincoln in Manhunt, Maisie Williams in The New Look, both on Apple TV and Trudie Styler in Pose on FX. Off-Broadway he coached Eve Ensler’s Emotional Creature at the Signature Theatre, The LAByrinth Theater’s The Little Flower of East Orange, Red Roses, Green Gold, the Grateful Dead Musical at the Minetta Lane Theatre and The Seagull Woodstock New York at the Romulus Linney Theatre. In regional theater he served three seasons as Voice and Text Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has coached at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Santa Fe Opera, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Shakespeare & Company, Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, Westport Country Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Kansas City Rep, Trinity Rep, Seattle Rep and Milwaukee Rep. For ten years he was visiting associate professor at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. He was also adjunct associate professor at Pace University’s Actors Studio Drama School and Syracuse University Department of Drama. He also taught at Columbia University, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Trinity Repertory Theatre and Conservatory, Vassar College, Ohio University, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Dartmouth College, University of Pittsburgh, University of South Carolina, American Conservatory Theatre, O’Neill Theater Center, The Theatre School at DePaul University and Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.
He has a teacher certification program for his method of Phonetics, Speech and Dialects, which is taught at North Carolina School of the Arts, Boston University, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Folkwang Universitat der Kunste, Cork Institute of Technology – School Of Music, University of Oklahoma – Norman, Azusa Pacific University, Philadelphia University of the Arts, the Terry Knickerbocker Studio, Circle in the Square Studio and many other actor training programs. He has coached professional productions for directors Nicholas Martin, Des McAnuff, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Maria Irene Fornes, Marshall Mason, Vivian Matalon, Adam McKay, Michael Gieleta, Laird Williamson, Peter Amster, George Keathley, Jo Bonney, Marion McClinton, Larry Carpenter, Ed Stern, Sharon Ott, J.R. Sullivan, Henry Godinez, Marty Callner, Risa Brainin, David Aspaugh and many others. He is the author of The Joy Of Phonetics and Accents, Bringing Speech to Life, How to Speak Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s Names: A New Pronouncing Dictionary. In 1987, Colaianni was designated by Kristin Linklater to carry on her work. He has given workshops in Shakespeare performance, voice, speech, phonetics and dialects internationally.