Don Wadsworth

Professor Emeritus

Don Wadsworth taught the voice and speech techniques for more than twenty years in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. He has directed main stage productions, led the New York and Los Angeles showcases in highly successful showings and created a course called The Business of Acting for the fourth year actors. During his tenure he lead the Acting and Music Theater option of nearly one hundred students and twenty faculty members.

Professionally, Don has coached the voice work for actors on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in feature films, television productions, in regional theater and for video games.

He coached the dialects for the Broadway musical, The Pirate Queen as well as a dozen world premiere productions including the Stephen Flaherty/Lynne Ahrens musical The Glorious Ones as well as many original productions including The Compleat Female Stage Beauty (in which he also played the role of Samuel Pepys). He was the dialect coach for Outsiders, a Sony Pictures Television production. (He also plays a part in it.) He coached CMU alums Matt Bomer and Josh Gad for various TV and film productions. He covered the voice work for the PBS mini series, The War that Made America and served as the dialect coach for Adventureland for Miramax Films, as well as The Road with Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, Warrior starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte for Lionsgate Films. Recently he coached an actor for the CBS show, FBI. Don has coached such Oscar-nominated actors as Bob Hoskins, Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis, Tom Hulce, Dianne Ladd and Danny Aiello. He has coached numerous dialects for landmark regional theater productions including Australian for Marshall Mason’s production The Sum of Us, New England for Robert Ackerman’s Our Town, Welsh for the StageWest production of Night Must Fall and South African for a national tour of Master Harold and the Boys. He has served as a voice and dialect coach for Actor’s Theater of Louisville, The Chautauqua Theater Company, The Pittsburgh Public Theater, The City Theater, Civic Light Opera, The Cleveland Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Barrington Stage in Massachusetts.

As an actor Don has been featured in the PBS television film Clarence Darrow with Kevin Spacey and Breathing Lessons, a Hallmark Television film. He has performed in many dramas and musicals including Fame, Cabaret, the national tour of Camelot playing Merlyn to Stacy Keach’s King Arthur. A veteran of more than twenty Shakespeare productions, he has played a wide variety of roles including Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Fool in King Lear.

He studied with Edith Skinner, the Speech and Dialects coach for the American Conservatory Theater, Cicely Berry, the Voice Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Patsy Rodenberg, the Voice Director of the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain. Don appears in the films The Chair with Sandra Oh (for Netflix), Smart People with Dennis Quaid.

For Carnegie Mellon, Don directed mainstage productions of Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, London Cuckolds, The Playboy of the Western World and The Learned Ladies.

He is a member of Actor’s Equity, SAG-AFTRA. Don’s voice can be heard on hundreds of regional and national radio and television commercials. He was named Best Actor for the Air Awards for his work in broadcast. Don is the solo voice for Watchword Production recording of the New Testament available world-wide on DVD and was a voice actor for the video game, FALLOUT 76.