Biography

Natsuko Ohama is one of the premier voice teachers in the world. Trained under legendary Master Kristin Linklater at the Working Theatre, she is a founding member and permanent faculty of Shakespeare and Company Lenox, Mass., is a senior artist at Pan Asian Rep New York, a certified Joy of Phonetics teacher trained by Louis Colaianni and was the Director of Training at the National Arts Center of Canada She has taught at numerous institutions all over North America, including the NYU Experimental Theater Wing, Cal Arts, Columbia University, the Sundance Institute, New Actors Workshop, the Stratford Festival, and was the Director of Training at the National Arts Center of Canada. Recently taught in Paris, Maine, Stromboli Italy, Istanbul, Turkey, and at the Wooster Group Summer Institute in New York. She also has an extensive workshop and private teaching practice. In Los Angeles has coached numerous productions at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and also at the Wallis Annenberg Theatre in Beverly Hills. A Drama Desk nominated actress, she has portrayed roles ranging from Juliet to Lady Macbeth from Hamlet to Prospero (Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company) from the action film Speed to the cult series Forever Knight and American Playhouse on PBS. She has been seen on screen in Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and on stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Dogeaters as Imelda Marcos and favorite recent roles as Polonius in the LAWSC production of Hamlet at the Odyssey Theatre and Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days at the Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena. Ms. Ohama’s play Geisha of the Gilded Age-Miyuki Morgan, was staged at the Ventford Theater in Lenox, Mass. As a director her credits include the Press and FACE for Visions and Voices at USC, and Macbeth 3 at the HERE Theatre in New York starring Lisa Wolpe. She is the recipient of the Playwright’s Arena Outstanding Contribution to Los Angeles Theatre Award and appears in the recent publication Voice and Speech Training in the New Millennium (Conversations with Master Teachers) by Nancy Saklad. She heads the voice progression for the MFA Acting Program at USC. She was in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Company in Ashland appearing in Snow in Midsummer and the Black Swan Lab.
In 2022 she appeared in Out of Time at the Public Theatre in New York, and last summer 2023 at the Clubbed Thumb Theatre in New York in Deep Blue Sound. Recent film credits Little Brother (winner of the Audience award at the Atlanta Film Festival), and Marvel/Disney Wonderman. She also co-directed Wintertime and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot here at USC. For more information, visit www.natsukoohama.com.