Voice Acting Class for Autistic Youths

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In 2010 I partnered with the HEAL! Foundation to teach a program to middle school age students who either had behavioral issues or were on the autistic spectrum. I developed and taught a curriculum for these children to help them understand emotions better. The final assignment for the program was to have the children write “mostly” serious dialogue and then become voice actors.

That sounds like an excellent therapeutic method! Did your students enjoy it?

Yes, Shadowtag. The students enjoyed it quite a bit. They had tried acting in front of a camera before and felt pressured by memorizing lines, thinking about facial expressions, thinking about vocal inflection, and being aware of each other. Acting is great, but voice acting allowed the children to read from a script one at a time and only worry about vocal inflection. They never got frustrated during this process unlike acting. I'm going to try this sort of thing again in the future

This is neat! Wish I was there.

Acting is a great way to know how others see and hear you. This voice acting class is a great idea. I took acting classes too in college, and those college acting classes helped me overcome some of my social awkwardness.

Last edited by ZachGoodwin on 08 Jun 2017, 12:18 am, edited 6 times in total.

I've seen a lot of socially awkward friends whom keep up with improv groups just for social practice. It can feel safe and fun.

I definitely think you should; I think by focusing only on providing voices is an excellent start and it looks like fun

rewritten:

Acting is a great way to know how others see and hear you. This voice acting class is a great idea. I took acting classes too in college; those college acting classes helped me overcome some of my social awkwardness.

Love it!

Acting and the world of the performing arts as a whole have done so much more for me than any therapy ever did. Are you planning on doing this again?

AspergersActor8693,

It's hard to run a class with everything else I'm doing. I'm a filmmaker first. It might be nice to try some sort of SKYPE-based class that wont put too much pressure on me nor the students attending.

Another thing I'm planning is a web series for actors, psychologists, artists, and socially awkward folk. The series is basically a Video Dictionary of all Human Emotions presented in a fun way.

Interesting idea for the web series.

What is the intention for making it for actors, psychologists, artists, and those who are socially awkward?

For Actors I've actually presented the information in such a way that it is comparable to a new acting style like "method"... one which I call "Literal Acting". For psychologists, it is merely giving them a tool if they so desire. For Artists it is providing the same service they'd find in stock photography of models. For the socially awkward well, that's up to interpretation... I feel awkward

Thank you for the explanation, and no worries, I am awkward too.

that's pretty cool!

I have wanted to be a voice actor since i was a kid. Coming from Germany where we have a pretty strong dubbing culture i have found this area to be very fascinating.

I can only imagine that children would love it, for i myself would be ecstatic!

A very good idea indeed!