Hobson’s Choice: RWCMD Student Wins Voiceover Prize

7th October 2011

The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama is delighted to announce that last night, MA Acting student Gwawr Loader won this year’s prestigious Hobsons Prize, awarded annually to graduating drama students for their voiceover skills.

The Prize was created by the leading artist’s agency Hobsons, to acknowledge and applaud the work of voiceover artists, to encourage its development, and discover new talent. Gwawr will now be represented for a minimum of a year by Hobsons Voices (who also have RWCMD alumni Rob Brydon on their books), together with a bespoke showreel, a dedicated page on their website and an opportunity to ‘shadow’ one of their established voices who will be acting as her mentor.

Gwawr couldn’t be at the award ceremony as she is currently on tour in her first professional role with Mappa Mundi’s Much Ado About Nothing, but she sent a video of her accepting the prize:

 “I am overwhelmed and feel incredibly lucky to have won the Hobsons Prize, which gives such encouragement to newcomers to the industry to embrace this medium,” said Gwawr. “Voiceover is such an important part of an actor’s career and to have such fantastic people supporting me so early on in my working life is very exciting. I enjoyed the competition process so much and would encourage all eligible students to give it a go. Thank you to everyone who helped and supported me throughout.”

Chairman of the judges, David Hodge, adds: “In this prize we are dealing with raw new talent, and yet the standard was reassuringly high. As Gwawr began her session, I had cause to step out of the room for a moment. When I returned, there was almost stunned silence and a few dropped jaws. Gwawr had simply ‘got it’, she understood and performed perfectly from the first read through. It transpires that she is one of those all too rare people for whom performing a voiceover is innate. But the skill of voice work is also about personality and displaying the right amount of exuberance when working with clients and in this Gwawr also excelled. She is what Hobsons are always seeking in an artist: the complete package. We look forward to working with her.”

Voice work is an important part the contemporary actor’s skill set and many colleges, including The Royal Welsh College are now including voice-over and microphone techinque, as well as radio drama, into their syllabus.

The four chosen finalists performed at a London sound studio, in a simulation of a typical, professional voice-over session, with the judges acting as the clients. The finalists then read two commercial scripts, which they had not previously seen, as would usually be the case in a professional scenario.

The Prize is only open to graduating students from full-time education at accredited Drama schools, where microphone technique training for commercial and narrative recordings is included in the syllabus.

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