Don Wadsworth

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 number of world premiere productions including the Stephen Flaherty/Lynne Ahrens musical The Glorious Ones and the original productions of Red Herring, The Secret Letters of Jackie and Marilyn, Louder, Faster, The Morini Strad, Speak American, The 13th of Paris and The Compleat Female Stage Beauty (in which he also played the role of Samuel Pepys).

Wadsworth is the dialect coach for Outsiders, a Sony Pictures Television production that aired in January 2016, (He also plays a part in it). He has coached CMU alumni 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. He served as the dialect coach for Adventureland for Miramax Films, The Road with Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, Homecoming with Mischa Barton, Sorority Row with Julian Morris, Warrior starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte for Lionsgate Films, and A New York Heartbeat with Eric Roberts.

Wadsworth 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, Opera Pittsburgh, The Cleveland Playhouse and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

As an actor Wadsworth 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 20 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 appears in the films Smart People with Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker and Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

Wadsworth 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.

For Carnegie Mellon Wadsworth has 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 (the film and television actors’ unions). Wadsworth’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. He is the solo voice for the New Testament for Watchword Productions available world-wide on DVD.