Vocal Coach Gigi Buffington Helped Lead The Outsiders and Stereophonic to Tony-Winning Success

A vocal, text, and dialect coach could hardly ask for a better year than the one Gigi Buffington enjoyed last season.

Buffington, who spent eight seasons at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, was the vocal, text, and dialect coach for both The Outsiders and Stereophonic, which picked up the top prizes at the 2024 Tony Awards, Best Musical and Best Play, respectively. For the former, she helped illuminate the vocal differences between the Greasers and the Socs. For the latter, she helped the actors, who play rock stars from both sides of the Atlantic, bring authenticity to their performances.

The Chicago native was also the vocal coach for Paula Vogel's Mother Play and Joshua Harmon's Prayer for the French Republic, two other 2024 Tony nominees for Best Play. And, this season, she is handling those same duties for the psychological thriller Job, the two-hander currently playing a limited engagement at Broadway's Hayes Theater.

Buffington's Broadway work also includes Grey House, Between Riverside and Crazy, Cost of Living, The Minutes, Clyde’s, Slave Play, Pass Over, Linda Vista, and Straight White Men, while her Off-Broadway credits feature Downstate, Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, Corsicana, and Heroes of the Fourth Turning. She is also an arts professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

In the interview below for the Playbill series How Did I Get Here—spotlighting not only actors, but directors, designers, musicians, and others who work on and off the stage to create the magic that is live theatre—Buffington shares how she went from dancer to dialect coach, how her students propelled her work to a new level, and why Stereophonic is her proudest achievement.

Gigi Buffington and cast of *Stereophonic*

Where did you train/study?
Gigi Buffington: I trained with Robert Neff Williams in his two-year Voice, Speech and Shakespeare program after two years with Maggie Flanigan at William Esper Studio. A decade later, I received my master's at The Guildhall School of Music & Drama in Training Actors (Voice) followed by a Post Graduate Award from the University of Warwick in Teaching Shakespeare to Actors and Artists.

Was there a teacher who was particularly impactful/helpful? What made this instructor stand out?
There were three impactful teachers in my journey: Robert Neff Williams, Anne Bogart, and Patsy Rodenburg.

What are the duties of a dialect coach before the show opens? What are the responsibilities after it's running?
Each production has specific needs, and these needs always vary. As a voice, text, and dialect coach, my work includes one-on-one sessions with actors after the first table read (in which the playwright and director communicate their vision for the world of the play), table work with questions and a deep dive into the text begins, and folding the global information into the specific work of the actor. When dialects are used, I offer the actors audio samples of native speakers and break down key sound changes, explore rhythm and tune, and how this all stems from the body, breath, and onset of sound.

How do you make sure different accents are accurate, considering there are so many different accents that vary based on region?
I listen to native speakers from the period of the play in my research and make phonetic transcriptions. The ethnicity of the speaker in the period of the play to align with the actor playing the character is part of my research.

For Stereophonic, what was your guidance for the actors playing British characters on where to base their accents from?
Daniel Aukin and I spoke about the world and period of the play in depth. He was born and raised in London—as was Enver Chakartash, our costume designer. They were my touchstones once we got to tech. Both David Adjmi and I lived and worked in London. I had three years to attune my ear during that period. Each of the brilliant actors—Juliana Canfield, Will Brill, and Chris Stack—and I met before rehearsals began. I asked them what their ideas were. I’d listened to countless interviews with musicians from the period. There was a fascinating intersection of stellar musicians working with each other, changing bands, then going on to solo careers. We built our world from Sandy Denny, Mick Fleetwood, and from Monty Python’s Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

What made you decide to become a dialect coach?
I decided to become a voice and text coach, which includes dialect work, when I moved to London to train with Patsy Rodenburg at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Unlocking my own voice, trapped from years of being a professional dancer, and helping others to free their own was the most transformative process in my life. How the body, breath, and voice meets language, meets the text, and how the specificity within the text leads to clarity in the action is electrifying. That riveting actor you cannot take your attention from? I would venture to say that actor is in the word and on the word with great flexibility and ease in the mouth and articulators.

Barton Cowperthwaite, Dan Berry, RJ Higton, Kevin William Paul, Emma Pittman, Melody Rose, and Sean Harrison Jones in *The Outsiders* Matthew Murphy

Were there any particular challenges for the accents used in The Outsiders, since many may assume it's American Midwest?
Yes, it is rooted in the American Midwest! The trap for many is to venture too far south with the dialect and lose that midwestern foundation. We explored distinct vowel and diphthong changes, exaggerating the results of going too far versus landing the subtlety of the sounds within. For example, the phrase, "I fly high in the sky." Removing the second element of the diphthong repeated in this phrase will send us too far south. Sounding entirely through both elements of the diphthong loses accuracy of the rhythm and tune of Tulsa 1967.

Again, bringing in audio samples for the cast of speakers from the period representing the racial identities of our cast was a great launching-off point. A huge component of our work was the class you were cast in. A Greaser will have a placement baseline sitting back in the mouth, whereas a Soc will be very forward-placed. Both can weaponize words when mocking each other. To hear Two-Bit Matthews stand up to Bob weaponizing the line, “Is there a problem, Robert?” becomes a brilliant action on Two-Bit’s part. How he speaks the text, over-articulating what he says to mimic Bob, breaks everyone up. He scores points with the Greasers and shames Bob in the process.

Tell me about a time you almost gave up but didn’t.
I was teaching at Columbia College Chicago years ago. I understood, in a revelatory encounter with two of my students, that the work of Speech Training in Voice and Speech for Actors was a perceived of as “some white guy telling us how to talk.” I had trained—I stood at the bus stop practicing my "s"'s with made-up sibilant phrases, “the bus stop on Second Avenue slows shoppers slightly…” to improve my work for Robert Neff Williams. I made it all a part of my life. For many of my students, this work was totally disconnected from their worlds, from their mother tongue, and they tolerated it in class or used it in job interviews but never in their own lives.

I understood that I could no longer teach this work in that moment. I had to find another way that helped students to develop their instruments for character transformation and honor their mother tongue at the same time. I dropped everything I was doing, and moved to London to pursue a Master’s with Patsy Rodenburg. I thought that this two-year dive into a reinvestigation of everything I had learned could lead me to a whole new foundation and pathways into what and how I teach.

What do you consider your big break?
Becoming Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s vocal coach, a role I had exclusively for eight seasons.

How did you get your first job in the theatre?
I auditioned for Cis Berry at the RSC for a one-year position as a voice and text coach. My audition was to prepare a 20-minute voice and text warm up.

What is the most memorable day job you ever had?
I was a Christmas elf for Macy’s.

Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon in *Job* Emilio Madrid

Is there a person or people you most respect in your field and why?
Robert Neff Williams was a consummate theatre artist. When he wasn’t coaching a Broadway or Off-Broadway play, he was attending one. He taught us as much about the world of the theatre, the brilliant playwrights and actors not to miss, the history of iconic roles and productions, legendary performances we could aspire to. He was kind and generous and demanding. To be in his program was to be as committed to the work as he was to the theatre.

What advice would you give your younger self or anyone starting out?
Where are doors opening to you in your life? Pay attention to those openings. How do you want to live your life day to day? There is no one way to do anything. Tune into your own unique self. If your life becomes one of despair and misery, chances are, you are not in sync with your unique nature. Align yourself. Breathe. Be present. If you have an intuition, an impulse, act on it.

What do you wish you knew starting out that you know now?
Trusting that by putting in the work, staying true to yourself, acting with integrity in every situation, you will attract the work and humans making that work that you want to collaborate with. Anxiety is a detriment to clarity and health.

What is your proudest achievement as a dialect coach?
As a voice, text, and dialect coach, Stereophonic is and continues to be my proudest achievement. It has tapped my every resource. The heavy vocal lift of that show has demanded from me ongoing creative input and vocal health maintenance. The extraordinary ensemble has the challenge of navigating clarity within a documentary-style approach to the world of the play, overlapping dialogue with precision and nuance. They shout, they sing, their voices crack and soar…it is every imaginable vocal challenge played out eight times a week. It is a world of Americans and Brits; the audience has to constantly adjust to the aural variety in those accents. The audience has to lean in. It is a subtle and constant shifting of plates.

Going on this journey as we built the play, supporting it throughout the run, and collaborating with the team—this has been my proudest achievement.