Centre Stage: Lessons from Actors on the Art of Charisma

Every time you deliver a speech, give a presentation, or simply tell a good story, you are taking centre stage. Here, one of the world’s leading voice coaches introduces the simple exercises that great actors use to hold people’s attention – and reveals how anyone speaking in public can use them.

Drawing on 25 years working at the National Theatre in London, Jeannette Nelson explains:

• How to warm up your voice and body before a big speech.
• How learning to breathe deeply can improve your clarity and pace.
• How to divide a script into individual ‘thoughts’ so it flows more naturally.
• How to adapt your delivery to suit any environment, be it a 1,000-seater auditorium or an intimate Zoom meeting.

Along the way, she recounts stories from leading actors that pull back the curtain on how they learnt to own the room, and how you can too. If all the world’s a stage, this book will turn you into its lead actor.

'The theatre stars' voice guru' Daily Mail

Centre stage is available in paperback, eBook and Audio Download.

Keeping It Active: A Practical Guide to Rhetoric in Performance

Every time you open your mouth on stage you are trying to persuade somebody of something.

Sometimes referred to as 'the art of persuasion', rhetoric means using language to communicate your ideas and intentions to other people – and to make sure you are heard, understood and believed. This clear and concise guide explains how it works in plays, and how actors can use it to bring their performances to life on stage.

Drawing on her decades of experience working with actors on major productions, including as Head of Voice at the National Theatre, Jeannette Nelson introduces all the major rhetorical techniques and devices that playwrights use. She offers fascinating breakdowns of dialogue and speeches from across the theatrical canon – from Shakespeare and Ibsen, to Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry and Arthur Miller, right up to contemporary playwrights such as Helen Edmundson and Tanika Gupta. Each chapter also includes a series of practical exercises which combine spoken word with physical action to help you explore and understand these techniques, and harness their power in performance.

Whether you're an actor, a director or a drama teacher, Keeping It Active will empower you with a greater understanding of the ways that language underpins all dramatic works, and will give you the tools you need to unlock the text, understand characters, connect with the audience, and perform with greater confidence, focus and authenticity.

'As this excellent book outlines, rhetoric is everywhere. It's not simply in the parliament, the press conference and the court; it's in the workplace, the home and the family. There's no argument, classical or modern, in a play that isn't informed and helped by Jeannette's work' Josie Rourke, from her Foreword

'A great resource for actors and directors' Ralph Fiennes

'Jeannette Nelson's revelatory relationship to language is, quite simply, life-changing' Simon Godwin

'Jeannette taught me so much... I felt like I could persuade anybody to do anything' Sophie Okonedo

The Voice Exercise Book

In The Voice Exercise Book, Jeannette Nelson shares the voice exercises she uses with many of Britain’s leading actors to help to keep their voices in shape. Her belief is that all of us, not just actors, can learn to use our voices well.

When you perform professionally, or you just want to be understood clearly and easily, you can improve your voice by knowing how it works and by practising simple exercises. The aim is not to ‘fake it’ – to try to sound like someone else. It is to find your authentic voice: to be honestly and clearly you in any situation.

This book will be useful to actors, teachers and anyone else who uses their voice professionally. That might be all day or just at meetings and presentations, or in the theatre. Its content is based on the work that Jeannette does every day with professional actors and is therefore suitable for anyone who has to ‘perform’ with this voice, whether on stage, in school, in a place of worship, in the boardroom, on the sales floor or on the end of a telephone. Being heard and understood, clearly and easily, is of course the desire of all who use their voice to communicate professionally.