Françoise Walot

I am an actor, director and voice practitioner who teaches spoken voice and text. I was born in Belgium and moved to the UK in 2010. As a young performer I had lots of voice problems and those issues reduced my confidence in my acting abilities. I had tight breathing musculature leading to breathiness which caused throat pain, no vocal resonance and headaches while performing. It's because of those difficulties and limitations that I became interested in vocal issues. I met Kristin Linklater in Belgium in 1985 during a one week voice, sound and movement and text workshop. After that workshop I decided to study voice and travelled many times to the US to work with Kristin Linklater. I completed the Linklater training in 1993, including movement studies with Trish Arnold. The work completely transformed my relationship to my voice and my acting. I started teaching voice in the Conservatoire de Liège while performing in classical and and experimental plays. I taught in the Conservatoire of Mons until 2010, when I moved to the UK.

Other training includes movement studies with Susan Dibble, Lorna Marshall (The Body Speaks) and Merry Conway (The Actor as Instrument)

Singing with Frankie Armstrong, Venice Manley, Helen Chadwick and Lucy Grauman (Ik Zeg Adieu).

Voice with Andrea Haring, Cecil McKinnon, Fran Bennett, Cicely Berry and Barbara Houseman.

I became a visiting lecturer at the RBC in 2011 and have joined the faculty as Assistant Lecturer in Voice in 2017. Here, I teach voice into text for the BA Applied Theatre year 1 and 2, practical voice on MA Acting, MFA Acting in the British Tradition year 1 and 2 and MA Professional Voice Practice courses. I also provide vocal support on student productions (BA Applied Performance). Since 2017, I teach Embodied voice practice to the Voice Studies Master's students at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. In addition to teaching voice, I am providing pastoral, academic and pedagogical support to the students including supervising Postgraduate research project in acting. Outside the conservatoire training setting, I am translating into French Kristin Linklater's book "Freeing the Natural Voice" and working as a theatre director.

Françoise’s professional acting credits include many productions in Belgium with Le Théâtre de l'Eveil, Théâtre du Parc, le Groupov, l'Atelier Saint-Anne and Le Théâtre du Ciel Noir amongst others. She also wrote and performed her own work (Kabrioles in 1986, Monument à la Femme Inconnue in 1998, Les Femmes Savent Pourquoi in 2005 and Close to my Heart in 2009). For four years in Brussels, she ran Le Théâtre "Le Café!" a small scale theatre devoted to political theatre that produced "Paroles de Femmes" with which she toured extensively in Belgium and Romania (2003). Her directing credits include Chiquet Mawet's plays, and many one person shows (Les Murs ont des Oreilles (Sophie Bonhôte 1997) and Violet Shoe in the Ditch (Diane Broman 2006) for instance. She has directed Duncan MacMillan's “Toutes les Choses Géniales” (Every Brilliant Thing) for the Royal Festival de Spa in Belgium (2018).