JOHN ABULAFIA: Director, Craft of Communication

John’s first play, which he wrote and directed while at Sussex University, won the Sunday Times Drama Festival, transferred to Oxford Playhouse and was filmed by the BBC.

After graduating, he was invited to set up a touring theatre company in an area of Yorkshire that had had no theatre for thirty years. It was there that he learned, at first hand, about the performer-audience relationship and the persuasive power of language and the human voice.

He subsequently honed his management and marketing skills when he ran three theatre companies. In each, he created an ensemble of actors capable of doing a huge variety of repertoire: this taught him about leadership and managing team dynamics.

John has always loved opera and musical theatre. He directed at English National Opera and founded and ran the ground-breaking Mecklenburgh Opera Company whose work was awarded the Prudential Award for Opera and The Independent’s Opera of the Year. The BBC filmed his productions of THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS and BRUNDIBAR, two operas originally staged in the Nazi concentration camp of Terezin. This production was invited to the Czech Republic for the Janacek Festival. As part of the Millennium celebrations, John created a multi media staging of Haydn’s CREATION in the courtyard of Somerset House; it had a cast of four hundred singers, musicians, actors and children, bringing together music, theatre, opera and cosmology.

John has directed for many major companies: also at the National Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Royal Court, Glyndebourne Opera, South Bank Centre, Northcott Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Stratford East and theatres and opera houses in Germany, Israel and New York.

His first novel, FOOLSCAP, was published by Faber. He has written for theatre, TV and radio and also translated operas from Czech, French and Polish.

With the new century, John wanted to create a richer work-life balance. He founded Craft of Communication in 2001. For many years, he has taught actors and singers. The skills he taught at RADA, Guildhall and the Royal College of Music Opera School have proved to be transferable to anyone who has to deal with any kind of audience. John’s understanding of the dynamics of performance, the power of language and the human voice, audience psychology and the people management essential to theatre and opera have proved to be a valuable resource to our many clients. After eight years’ growth and development, Craft of Communication now has 150 clients in 56 sectors and offers a wide variety of communication skills. To meet the increasing demand, John has brought in several highly talented coaches whose skills complement his own.

John keeps a balance between his work as an international communications coach and his creative work. His latest production was a multimedia production of the Tango Opera, MARIA DE BUENOS AIRES. He negotiated the co production deal between five British Festivals and several European Opera Houses. The production toured to them all, winning five-star reviews. Since 2005, John has been working on his second novel, THE DAYS OF AWE. This will be completed in early 2011.

CRAFT OF COMMUNICATION COACHES, TRAINERS & CONSULTANTS:

TARA SHAW: Co Director and Senior Vocal Coach

Tara originally trained as an actor at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts). She has had a long established acting career ranging from theatre work at the Royal National Theatre to numerous appearances on film and TV.

She gained an MA in Voice Studies at Central School of Speech and Drama. After she graduated with Distinction, Central School invited Tara to join the academic teaching staff. Tara now teaches on the Voice M.A. She created the presentation skills module of the M.A as well as teaching modules in voice, text, pedagogy and academic research.

Tara also teaches voice and acting skills in leading drama schools such as The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts). She is also a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at the London Metropolitan University on the B.A. Honours course.

Tara has wide experience as a business coach. Her combined skills as a voice specialist and experience as a theatre actor, director and practitioner have been invaluable in creating and teaching courses in Presentations Skills. As the Senior Associate of Craft of Communication, Tara drew on her experience as a TV and Film actor when she co-created a course in Video Conferencing now used by e Bay and other leading clients of Craft of Communication.

Tara has run programmes and also coached senior executives at L’Oreal, Unilever, Barclays Bank, University of Surrey, JP Morgan, Kurt Salmon Associates, Centrica, Grainger PLC and eBay.

HELGA DAVIES: Meeting Management & Facilitation Coach

Helga Davies has been an interpersonal skills trainer, facilitator and strategic consultant for over 14 years. Her experience spans many industry sectors including manufacturing, retail, finance, technology, energy, recruitment and telecommunications. Her specialism is in improving the strategic and operational effectiveness of leaders to manage the implementation and sustainment of change.

She is currently undertaking research into how team dynamics support or sabotage the high performance of teams.

She holds an M.Sc and B.Sc in Business Management. She has taught Meeting Management, Facilitation and Influencing across many sectors. Her client list includes Vodafone, Hewlett Packard, Barclays Global Investors, Unipart, Mouchel, Molson Coors, Royal Bank of Scotland, Disney, The College of Law, Rolls Royce, BMW, Prudential, Anglian Water, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis.

SALLY EDEN: Communications Coach

Sally Eden is a journalist with 20 years experience. She presents the business news on BBC World, regularly anchoring the channel’s flagship business programme World Business Report, seen globally by 10 million people. She also presents on the BBC News Channel. Sally began her on-screen career as a reporter for TV-am before moving to Border Television, LWT, Meridian and GMTV – the ITV breakfast television station – where she was North America correspondent for three years. Sally combines her presenting career with coaching executives with improving their communication skills.

Sally is also a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming. She specialises in Media Training; crisis media training; communications expertise, presentation coaching and facilitation. She also works privately with a number of top-level executives to help them maximise their business skills to reach their goals. Her clients include Barclays, the Financial Services Authority, Macquarie Bank, the Lyric Theatre, Citigroup, and the pharma giant Roche, for whom she conducts these courses across the management and communications teams throughout Europe. Recently, she worked with executives from Sony Ericsson, facilitating a day’s workshop for the company’s 2011 plan.

COLIN FARQUHARSON: Vocal Coach and Magician

Colin Farquharson first trained as an actor and worked in the industry for ten years before completing his MA in Voice Studies. He now works as a Voice, Text and Acting Coach as well as being a certified Elaine Petrone Body Works Practitioner.

His approach to voice work is based on the view that the voice is a product of muscular activity and movement within the body. As such, effective communication and voice work should include work which focuses on freeing, developing and fine tuning the whole physical body. Colin has developed a system of work which utilizes therapy balls to re-align the body and breath, remove excess muscular tension and release an individual’s vocal potential enabling the client to communicate more effectively.

Colin uses this work in actor training at various theatre schools in the UK and abroad including, Central School of Speech and Drama, East 15, The Musical Theatre Academy, Gloucestershire University and the Schauspielschule-Sachers, in Innsbruck, Austria. He has also taught it in the corporate sector for HULT International Business School, Ingeus and CENTA Business Services and regularly works with Central School of Speech and Drama’s Knowledge Transfer program.

MOLLY GREENWOOD: Vocal Coach and Speech Therapist

Molly has a BSc (Hons) in Speech and Language Therapy from City University in London, and an MA in Voice Studies from the Central School of Speech and Drama.

In her private sector work, Molly has worked with both individuals and groups. After a thorough assessment, her approach to helping those with Speech and Language issues is always collaborative. Working together, Molly and her client arrive at a training programme tailor-made to the individual’s needs. Molly and the client work on concrete examples the client brings from their work environment.

Molly’s approach is holistic, embracing the whole system of speech; from body, breath, phonation and resonance use to articulation and manner of delivery. Her goal is to help clients through their difficulties and develop articulation and clarity in their speaking voices.

Her approach can help those with overt speech issues such a stammer (including word-blocks, repetitions and prolongations), a lisp, an overly loud, quiet, high or low-pitched voice, or unconscious habits such as a habitual cough or throat clearing. Often people learn to suppress these speech and language problems in the work environment. These covert speech and language difficulties lead to stress and sap confidence. However, these too can be modified or developed through Molly’s work.

Her speech coaching can also incorporate accent reduction if the client feels that their accent is impacting on communication in the work environment, possibly because or articulation difficulties or inappropriate use of stress and intonation. This work is reinforced by her experience as a fully qualified teacher of English to speakers of other languages: she holds a University of Cambridge CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults).