Jessica’s work in voice spans some 30 years. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama on the pre-eminent Voice Studies course. As a child she studied music as a Junior Exhibitioner at the Royal College of Music and afterwards, acting at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Her early career was that of an actor, singer, composer and musical director in the West End, Off-West End, Repertory Theatre, National touring and Theatre-in-Education.
Her voice coaching includes work on Peter Pan (Birmingham Rep), Clybourne Park and Tribes (Royal Court), Mamma Mia! (Prince Edward), The Daughter-in-Law (Bolton Octagon), The Real Thing (Salisbury Playhouse), Our Country’s Good (Nottingham Playhouse), Crave (Barbican), The Changeling (Nortcott Theatre Exeter), Dysfunction (Soho Theatre), The Merchant of Venice (Arcola), The Dybukk (Theatre for the New City, New York), Skin Into Rainbows (Mercury Theatre Colchester), Waking (Half Moon YPT), Father Brown (BBC) and The Prince and the Pauper (Hallmark Films). In actor training she has taught at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, Poor School, RADA, Rose Bruford College, Northampton and Middlesex Universities, British-American Drama Academy, Syracuse University London Centre and the Actors Centre.
Jessica’s work encompasses voice and presentation in the business sector, including training programmes with Cranfield and Ashridge Management Colleges, City Lit, Richard Phillips and Charles Worthington salons. She has significant experience working in disability arts through her work with Graeae Theatre, Ramps to the Moon, Vital Xposure, Deafinitely Theatre and Extant. Jessica is also an acting coach and theatre director.
‘There is one thing working with a good voice coach but another working with a voice coach who perfectly understands actors and the acting craft.’
Vesna Stanojevic, actor, teacher
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‘Jessica is the first person I turn to when I start to work on a character or have any public speaking to do…I walk out of her sessions feeling one hundred percent more confident.’
Shelagh McLeod, actor, writer, director
‘Having worked with Jessica for some years, I know her to be a gifted, insightful and dedicated teacher of voice, able to inspire, encourage and support as well as to get to the heart of matters concerning both technique and text.’
Bernard King, pianist and pyschotherapist
Jessica Higgs 