Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa both grew up speaking English and Spanish, and they share memories of being made to feel like their voices, dialects, and identities weren’t “good enough” for Shakespeare. Now, both DeCure and Espinosa are vocal coaches and actors. They share an example of how an actor might embody their text, praise on the late great Raul Julia, and explain how important it is for actors to bring their 'voces culturales' to Shakespeare’s words.

Cynthia Santos DeCure is an Assistant Professor of Acting at the Yale School of Drama. She was most recently the dialect coach for El Huracán at Yale Rep, and she was an on-set dialect coach for Orange is the New Black on Netflix.

Micha Espinosa is a Professor in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre at Arizona State University. She was the Voice and Text Director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s world premiere production of La Comedia of Errors, a bilingual adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play from the Play on! translation by Christina Anderson.

DeCure and Espinosa wrote about vocal coaching in chapters in Shakespeare and Latinidad, a collection of essays in the field of Latinx theater, edited by Carla Della Gatta and Trevor Boffone and published by Edinburgh University Press in June 2021.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published November 9, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Any Accent Breaking From Thy Tongue,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, Josh Leal at Sun Studios of Arizona in Tempe, and Ryan McEvoy at the Yale University Broadcast Studio.