Audiobook Narration Workshop: It’s Not About the Voice

 

Learn about the art of audiobook storytelling from award-winning director and producer Paul Alan Ruben in this special conservatory offering. The purpose of this SAG-AFTRA audiobook workshop is to identify fundamental performance habits - both in fiction and non-fiction - that create compelling storytelling. Becoming a compelling and successful audiobook narrator, in both fiction and non-fiction, begins with recognizing that a storyteller's job is 100% acting, 0% voicing.

In fiction, the fundamental performance habits that will be addressed include identifying and playing point of view, playing the emotional stakes and matching them, playing the third-person narrator, speaking dialogue like real people, engaging the here and now, and using punctuation as your co-director. In non-fiction, these fundamental performance habits include understanding your performance outcome as the author’s  surrogate, owning your role as expert/teacher/persuader, and emotionally investing yourself in ‘wowing’ the listener with this fantastic story.

Ruben has directed and produced award-winning audiobooks for every major publisher since 1990. Ruben has received two Best Spoken Word Grammy Awards and the programs he has directed have received numerous Audiofile Earphone and APA Audie Awards, including last year’s Audie-winner, Lisa Flannigan, for Spinning Silver. Over his career, Ruben has conducted narrators’ workshops and coached numerous individual narrators. He has also cast and directed multiple first-time narrators, many of whom have become household names, including, Edoardo Ballerini, Oliver Wyman, Michael Crouch, Maggi-Meg Reed, Cassandra Morris, David Ledoux, Holter Graham and Kathleen McInnerney.

 

RSVP: Reservations are required. Please complete the form below to RSVP; you must be logged in to RSVP. 

This event is only open to paid-up SAG-AFTRA members in good standing (paid thru April 30, 2023, or Oct. 31, 2023). No guests are allowed. Parents/guardians of performers under 18 years old are welcome.

ADA requests may be included on your RSVP form below. Please note that ADA requests must be received 48 business hours before the start of the event.