Better than the Best!

A Masterclass for Skilled Speakers

How Good Do You Want To Be?

In ancient Greece, when every Patrician youth completed his education by studying under a Rhetor (to learn rhetoric), it is said that lads were made to deliver long and arduous speeches immediately following a run to the top of a nearby hill and back. This was to improve breath control.

Young Richard Jenkins, when developing his diction and voice projection under the tutelage of his mentor, Philip Burton (whose surname he adopted for his stage name)*, used to recite poetry in the open air at the top of his voice with his mouth full of pebbles.

How Good Do You Want To Be?

You may be saddened to learn that I employ neither of those techniques in this Master Class. But if the means differ, the end is the same: this is wholly aimed at excellence in delivery. And I mean excellence! It is the one area where even the best speakers too often fall down.

How Good Do You Want To Be?

For three hours (or four if it is a group), we supply you with an awesome armoury of skills, by working on…

  • Resonance — and where to find it
  • Diction — and how to perfect it without sounding absurdly pedantic
  • Projection — how even a whisper can be made audible in a large hall
  • Onomatopoeism — an invented word, but you’ll have cracked the code
  • Modulation — which is not what nearly everyone thinks it is
  • The Wisdom of the Ancients — how can we learn from the likes of Cicero?
  • I Got Rhythm — which to use, and when
  • Phrasing — the ultimate flavour-enhancer

This Master Class is available only to those whose speaking skills are already well advanced. And consistent with my eternal mantra that once on the platform speakers should concentrate on nothing but their message and its effect on their audience, we instil and embed best practice techniques so that they become unconscious, instinctive, second nature.


* Yes, that’s right: Richard Burton