Anne Schilling

Anne Schilling received her master’s degree with distinction from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and holds specialized certifications as an Associate Fitzmaurice Voicework® Teacher, an Alba Method Instructor (Certification Level 4) and a Laughter Yoga Leader. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and the Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA). She has served on VASTA’s board of directors, and is currently on the board of directors for the Alba Method Association.

Prior to coming to SMU, Schilling taught at California State University–Long Beach, where she was responsible for redesigning the undergraduate and graduate voice and speech curriculum. Additionally, she has taught in the U.S. at Ohio University and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, and in the U.K. at Guildford School of Acting.   

She has worked as a voice/text/dialect coach for numerous theatres and professional solo performers in the U.S. and U.K. (including, nationally, with East West Players, Native Voices at the Autry, and La Mama Experimental Theatre, and locally with the Dallas Theater Center, Undermain, Kitchen Dog, WaterTower, Second Thought, Trinity Shakespeare, Theatre Three, and Contemporary theatres in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex), in addition to coaching privately.

Schilling has been awarded many grants to research, publish, present and conduct workshops on the topics of rituals, laments, the physicality of emotions, and vocal communication through heightened affective states. She has presented lectures and workshops throughout the U.S., and internationally in England, Ireland, South Africa and Canada. Since 2012, Schilling has been teaching Alba Method certification workshops regularly in New York City and Los Angeles, and periodically in London, England. (Alba Method is a physiological approach to working with emotion in performance settings.) She recently co-authored a paper on how emotion-specific somatic training improves emotion recognition and intelligence, and continues to conduct research in this area. Additional publications on ritual and emotion are listed below. In actor training, she addresses the importance of physical approaches to and the healthy embodiment and expression of breath, emotion and voice.

Schilling has been a voice-over artist for years, primarily in commercial work and narration – including narration of the feature documentary film Kellie Coffey: I’m Still Here. She trained with Nancy Wolfson, one of Los Angeles’ top voice-over coaches.

As an actor she worked with a variety of New York theatres (such as HERE and New York Theatre Workshop) and on various television shows (including as a stunt double for All My Children), until focusing primarily on regional Shakespeare theatres, such as Colorado Shakespeare, Texas Shakespeare, and Cincinnati Shakespeare, where she held a two-year residency and won a Cincinnati Entertainment Award for her portrayal of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She has vocal-coached or acted in 25 of Shakespeare’s plays and performed 31 of his roles.