by Len Lear

“I wish I could convey to you the deep disappointment I have witnessed from scores of people who borrowed money or spent their last dime on a voiceover (VO) demo that should never be played for anyone in the industry.”

This is the message that long-time voiceover coach, musical theater performer and Melrose Park resident Joanne Joella would like to transmit to the public. An expert in regional speech and accent reduction, Joanne has coached beginners through professionals for almost 40 years and is recommended by Philadelphia recording studios and industry professionals.

According to Joella, 67, there are many organizations and classes that dupe the public into believing that because they speak, they can do VO. “They entice people to create VO demos at around $3500,” she said. “The average rate in NYC is $1200 and in Philadelphia, $500. Scamming is growing every year. Unfortunately, in my role as a casting director, I would be where the buck stopped.

“I had to look in hopeful faces and deliver the truth that well-meaning friends were unqualified to advise, and self-serving opportunists were too abundant to avoid, and the demo in my hand should be thrown away. That's why I want to help.” The situation is similar to the cottage industry of alleged talent scouts who persuade young women that they will become professional models, but first they must pay for a very expensive portfolio of “professional” photos.

Joella has performed in various musical theater productions throughout the region and has fronted or lent her powerful vocals to an array of rock bands. She has directed casting for radio and television for over a decade and instructed courses in radio production, announcing, dialects and oral interpretation at community colleges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Theatre Department at Arcadia University.

“Far too many people are willing to assist innocent individuals in the creation of a voiceover demo,” she said. “One of the best ways to protect yourself, if you think you’ve met one of these ‘helpful’ individuals, is to ask them to put in writing that you don’t have regional speech, a whistling or sibilant ‘s’ sound or distracting hyper-nasality. Have them sign off that your breathing is quiet and adequate (you don’t run out of air at the end of a sentence), and that you don’t sound sing-song-y or dull or exaaaaaaaggeeerrrraaated. Then see if they want to take your hard-earned money when a Better Business Bureau investigation is waiting in the wings.”

Joella spent the first 18 years of her life in the town of Norton, Massachusetts, which she says “couldn't even qualify as a one-horse town, more like a one-hoof village.” She began college at Emerson in Boston in 1966, but marriage at the end of her sophomore year took her to Berkeley, CA, from 1968 to 1972. In 1975, her husband's first post-doctoral fellowship, at Rockefeller University, landed her in Manhattan, where she finished her undergraduate work — a B.A. in Communication Arts and Sciences with a Theatre focus. She graduated magna cum laude and received a Theatre Department award. In 1995, she received a masters degree in English from Beaver College in Glenside (now Arcadia University)

In high school and college, Joella participated in plays and musicals, and while at Emerson, she was an active member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Ironically and in light of the many dance and singing lessons that she took for years and recitals that her parents seemed to love, Joella’s father lived in fear that she would “meet and marry some stage door Johnnie, have five kids, and he'll up and leave you ... ."

In 1975, her husband's second post-doctoral fellowship at UPenn brought her to Philadelphia, and that New Year's Eve was defined by a phone call from her family that her dad had suddenly died from a cardiac thrombosis at age 67. “It became very clear,” she said, “that stage door Johnnies or not, life is too short to resist hitching a ride where passion goes … My hope is to be able to reach more and more individuals to assist them in re-patterning their active breathing, so they will be breathing as if their life depended on it … which it does!”

For more information, visit www.joellaarts.com.