“Working with Louis Colaianni was one of the highlights of my run of ‘You’re Welcome America’. The training Louis provides gave me a solid foundation, not only vocally but performance-wise, that served me for an entire grueling run of a one-man show. It was my pleasure to work with a true master at his craft.”
–Will Ferrell
”Colaianni has developed ways of extending freedom and sensuality from voice into speech so that one need no longer divide voicing from speaking.”
–Kristin Linklater
“I begin my semester by teaching the IPA with Louis Colaianni’s pillows. If you haven’t seen these in use, get thee to a workshop. They are nothing short of miraculous. The students love them. Where in the past, students would groan on IPA days, now they moan when I don’t bring them to class.”
–Rinda Frye, Professor, University of Louisville
“Anderson and Colaianni, by inviting rather than prescribing, by exploring rather than standardizing, by playing rather than fixing and by encouraging rather than judging, allow the speaker to engage creativity, imagination and joy, in Bringing Speech to Life.”
–Bonnie N. Raphael, PhD., Professor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
“The Phonetic Pillow approach transforms learning the IPA from a rigid ‘chalk marks and memorization’ approach to a visceral stimulation of both voice and body.”
–Patrick Gagliano, Professor, Newberry College
“This work will now be a standard part of the curriculum of my class. The physical use of the pillows lessens considerably the students’ self consciousness and inhibition and considerably extends their range and heightens their freedom and sense of play.”
–William J. Johnson, Professor, University of California-Chico
“The students found such a sense of freedom and connection with the pillows. The pillows turned into beings with personalities. They gave the actor permissions to find out the emotional-physical edge to the sounds and the texts.”
–Dale Genge, Professor, Studio 58, Vancouver, B.C.
“This organic approach to speech allows the formation of sound to come from all of me, not just my lips, teeth and tongue. I cannot imagine learning speech by any other method.”
–Leigh Smiley Grace, School of the Arts, Philadelphia
“Louis’s right-brain method brought me up to speed in almost no time!”
–Kathy Hargreaves, Actor
“A concrete, practical and indispensable method.”
–James Yaegashi, Actor
