Laura Hitt
Associate Professor of Voice and Speech
BA – Bard College
MA – Trinity Repertory Conservatory/Rhode Island College (Brown University’s Theatre Consortium)
Professor Hitt works as a voice and dialect coach, actress, singer, and writer. For the past 25 years she has performed in and collaboratively created new theatre, musicals, and opera, in San Francisco (Theater Artaud/Whoopi Goldberg Productions), New York (St. Clement’s and Gene Frankel Theaters), Chicago (Ars Nova, Live Bait, CityLit), and Providence (Trinity Rep and Perishable). Her original work includes performing nationally and internationally in her one-woman music theatre piece, Dust Singing into Light: A Vision of Hildegard of Bingen. She has been on faculty, coached, and/or lectured about The Voice, Body and Creative Vision, at the Boston Conservatory, Brown University, Providence College, Wheaton College, Western Michigan University, and Rhode Island College. Prior to her move to WVU, she maintained private voice/performance studios in Boston, and Providence, RI.
Laura has worked as a dialect, voice/text or performance coach with theatre, medical and business professionals, and on numerous theatre and music productions in New York City, Boston, Providence, and West Virginia. In addition to coaching WVU productions, her credits include the critically acclaimed 2003 off-Broadway adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s work, And Then We Go On (directed by Peter Wallace) and the 2004 New York City Fringe Festival production of Statements ... by Athol Fugard (directed by Peter Wallace). In 2005 she served as dialect coach on Zeitgeist Stage Company’s Eliot Norton Award-winning Boston production of Joe Penhall’s Blue/orange (directed by David Miller), as well as Boston Theatre Works production of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul (directed by Jason Southerland). In 2006 she continued to work with Zeigeist, this time on their production of Flesh & Blood by Peter Gaitens (directed by David Miller). That year she also worked on the first Equity co-production between Greenbrier Valley Theatre and the WVU Division of Theatre and Dance, The Tempest (directed by Cathey Sawyer). In 2007 she will serve as dialect coach for Neil Bartlett’s new adaptation of Oliver Twist (directed by Neil Bartlett), to be co-produced and performed at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass.; Theatre for a New Audience, New York City; and Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, Calif. Her publication credits include being book editor of Great Speeches in History: Human Rights (Greenhaven/Gale, 2002).
Laura holds a BA in History & Literature from Bard College and a Master’s in Acting and Directing from Trinity Repertory Conservatory/Rhode Island College (this program is now Brown University’s Theatre Consortium). Her training includes extensive work in several approaches to the speaking and singing voice, acting, and movement. In her work, she is particularly interested in the interface between speaking, singing, and kinesthetic/imaginative awareness. Voice/text study includes work with Catherine Fitzmaurice, Kristen Linklater, Timothy Douglas, Richard Armstrong (and other Roy Hart teachers), Nancy Houfek, Alice Hermes, and Olympia Dukakis, as well as classical voice training with Jo Rodenburg (Britten-Pears School). Laura is an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, as well as a certified massage therapist.