About Cynthia
Cynthia Santos-DeCure is an actress, voice, speech and dialects coach; certified in both Knight-Thompson Speechwork® and as Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®.
She is an Associate Professor of Acting at the Yale School of Drama where she teaches accents, dialects and voice. She has coached productions Off-Broadway, and regional theaters across the U.S. as well as projects for Netflix, Showtime, WB, Nickelodeon and film.
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She is passionate about the authentic embodiment of accents and dialects of underrepresented communities and hence has researched, coached and written on the subject for over fifteen years.
A bilingual native of Puerto Rico, Cynthia lived in Southern California for over 30 years where she began exploring accent accent and dialect work first as an actor and then as a coach.
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A performer advocate, with over 30 years of experience, Cynthia served on the National Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild (1996-2001) where she also served as the Latino Committee and National Chair of the Women’s Committee. Currently, she serves on the Steering Committee of the Latinx Theater Commons (Howlround). She has presented at national conferences in Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., London and Montreal on empowering underrepresented voices, speech, and accents of Spanish. Her published research and scholarship examine linguistic identity and representation in performance and voice and speech training for the multicultural actor. Some publications: Writing and Performing Latina Identity (ProQuest), Scenes for Latinx Actors: Voices of the New American Theatre (Smith and Kraus), chapter-La Voz de Shakespeare (in book Shakespeare and Latinidad by Trevor Boffone Carla Della Gatta, Oxford Press). She is co-editor of, Latinx Actor Training (Routledge 2023) with her longtime collaborator, Micha Espinosa..
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and previously taught at California Institute of the Arts, UC Santa Barbara, University of Southern California, NY Film Academy and California State University. In addition to her academic teaching, she has taught workshops in the U.S. as well as internationally on voice, speech and accents in such places as Shanghai Theatre Academy – Winter Institute – Shanghai, China; Institut de Teatre – Barcelona, Spain and University of Puerto Rico- Drama Dept.
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Cynthia is also a playwright. Her play Miss Quince premiered at the 2012 John Lion New Plays Festival and received a merit award from KC/ACTF. The play was featured in NoPassport’s 30/30 Festival and received staged readings at Urban Theater Company in Chicago, Dramatic Question Theater in NYC and Cara Mia Theater in Dallas.Her bilingual co-adaptation with Tatiana Pandiani of Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) was presented by DGSD (Yale Drama) in the fall of 2021. She is a Yale Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project (2021-22). Member of the National Theatre Conference.
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She has a B.A. in Theater from the University of Southern California's School of Dramatic Arts and an MFA in acting from California State University, Los Angeles' Theatre, Film and Television program.
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She is the daughter of the late arranger-composer 'el maestro' Ray Santos whom she credits for her keen ear for accents and dialects.