Audiobook Special: An interview with Clare Corbett
Clare Corbett is the reader for three Quercus Audiobooks in the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. Rose Tomaszewska met her at Strathmore recording studios to find out more about an actor’s role in the creation of audiobooks.
Rose Tomaszewska: Not many people know what your job is like. Would you tell us how you came to be a reader?
Clare Corbett: I won the Carlton Hobbs audition in 2001 after studying at the Welsh College of Music and Drama, and was chosen to be on the BBC Radio Rep. At first, I was asked to do various smaller readings, and then I got my first chance to do ‘A Book at Bedtime’. That got me into the flow of reading and being a part of that world.
After I left I got a voiceover agent who introduced me to new companies like the BBC audio books, Chivers, who got me into reading children’s books, and now I’ve progressed to reading adult books.
Rose Tomaszewska: And you’re also a stage and TV actress; is there one area you enjoy the most?
Clare Corbett: I should say reading books! I do enjoy reading books. But my favourite is theatre, because it’s a live experience; every night is different and you’re reacting off someone.
You’re just there, and that’s when you get the buzz of the job. With books, it’s more about the preparation that you do. Then in a play you have just one character. Whereas the beauty of a book is that you have every character and you’ve created that whole audio book. That’s the only job actually where you do: you’ve created everything from start to finish, with the producer’s help. It’s your little gift, from putting all this work in.
Clare Corbett: With a book, I read it once through, the whole thing, noting down the characters, where they’re from and the through-story. And then I read it again and work through any specific accents I’m not clear on.
With a script for theatre, or TV, you’re looking for the reasoning behind things- it becomes more in depth into the one character; whereas with a book you don’t have time to concentrate on one character. If you’re in first person, it’s a bit easier, but with a book like we’ve done today, it’s more about getting the overall view and feel for the book.
Rose Tomaszewska: We’ve just finished doing ‘A Room Full of Bones’, the fourth title in the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. Have you enjoyed reading her books?
Clare Corbett: This is the third one I’ve done, and they’re really exciting books. It’s all about a forensic archaeologist, Ruth, she’s always digging up bones and of course her findings lead to further investigations.
Then there’s a guy called Harry Nelson, who’s the police detective inspector, with whom she’s having a kind of relationship, and it’s a really lovely relationship. It’s nice to do a series of books, because you get to explore those characters.
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you have a particular affection for one character in the book?
Clare Corbett: Ruth is the most important person for me, even though it’s not written in the first person- because when I play Ruth, it is my own, natural voice. I have more affection for her as a character and I generally agree with what she says!
Rose Tomaszewska: There are a lot of different characters, how do you bring across their personalities in their voices, where do you get your inspiration?
Clare Corbett: You find it from the text, which will explain what the characters are like, and then you’ve got license to go anywhere you want – the producer guides you in that. So Harry Nelson is quite a brusque guy, forthright and thinks that men should be in control, and because of those descriptions you know what to do, naturally. As anyone would, I imagine, when reading a book; because when you read a book in your head, you’re kind of playing the characters.
Clare Corbett: Norfolk I had never done before I came to these books, which was a bit scary! I thought it was going to be in first person with a Norfolk accent. I’m from Bristol originally, and the accent is very similar to Norfolk, so I had to work on it quite a lot.
I go on a website which has people talking in different accents, and I listen and make notes phonetically on the page. In the book there are often Northern and Norfolk characters speaking to each other, and I find I have to switch accents quickly, which is quite difficult! But it’s just a matter of working hard, and listening, and having a good ear for accents, which I now have because of all the work I’ve done.
Rose Tomaszewska: Is that one of the hardest things about reading audio books?
Clare Corbett: No, the hardest thing is the long time spent in a studio. Normally with a voiceover, you only do an hour and sustain just one character. But with a book there are so many characters, and you’ve got to sustain the through-line of the story – you can make a book very bland if you just read it, deadpan – you’ve got to hook the reader in.
That’s where a producer and a sound engineer come in handy, they can say, “can you make this a little quicker,” or “bring up the intensity of the situation.” But you naturally have an instinct for that if you’re a good reader, and I hope I have.
It’s sustaining that concentration when you’re in the studio from 10am – 6pm with 3 breaks that can be hard. With a good producer, and with enough preparation- which is the key to doing audio books, you’re ok. And with enough cups of tea and coffee!
Rose Tomaszewska: How do you look after your voice?
Clare Corbett: I actually looked into insuring my voice the other day, because it’s making me enough money to worry about it! I don’t go out drinking the night before I do a book, or shout at festivals! If I have any worries with the voice, I have a steam, which is good for the throat, drink lots of water. Lots of boring things!
Rose Tomaszewska: And you’ve always been that good?
Clare Corbett: No, not always. I’ve learnt my lesson!
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you have somebody in mind when you’re reading?
Clare Corbett: I do that more with children’s books, because it’s more immediate. But with adult books, because I’m sitting in a studio, I’ve got the producer sitting opposite me so I’m reading to them and watching for their reactions through the glass window. With a children’s book, I kind of imagine the microphone to be a child.
Rose Tomaszewska: Would you ever want to do something really difficult like Virginia Woolf?
Clare Corbett: I’d love to! I’d love to give it a go. I did a book called Poppy Shakespeare, by Clare Allen, which is in the first person. There were so many different characters, and she was in a mental home, it was brilliant to play.
Because I’m an actor, the first person sits more happily with me than narration, because it allows you to be completely in the book: not flicking between characters. You’re in someone else’s head and their way of speaking, so you naturally start to physicalise it as well.
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you ever do that, gesticulate?
Clare Corbett: Yes. Too much! And get told by the engineer to stop moving, because as soon as you move, your face in moving towards or further away from the microphone, which is not conducive to a good reading, and you can bang the table as well, which is not good for a reader!
Rose Tomaszewska: Storytelling is quite an old tradition, probably one of the oldest dramatic, or even entertainment forms that there is in human culture. Do you ever think of how you’re a part of that tradition?
Clare Corbett: I do actually! It’s a wonderful thing to do. As a child, I used to get my Dad to read Goldilocks and the Three Bears over and over again. There’s something about it that is so warming, and makes you feel like home.
It draws you into a different world, and I think even at that age you want to escape and take your imagination to different worlds. I think that’s where it comes from, people wanting to draw on these mythical worlds. I’m very happy to be doing audio books, and I hope that that affects people, that they’re taken somewhere else when they’re listening.
Clare Corbett: Well, when you have to prep books all the time your mind is usually in a work mode when you’re reading! I did recently read a book called The Cry of the Go Away Bird, by Andrea Eames, about a young Zimbabwean white girl growing up on a farm during all the tensions in the 1990s.
I was doing it as an audio book but I read it through the first time round without making any marks on it, because I was so drawn in to the book. It was fantastic, a beautiful book to read. And that’s the nice thing about audio books, is that you read books you might not have chosen to read.
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you have any tips for someone wanting to be a voice actor?
Clare Corbett: Everyone wants to be a voice actor! What I always say is practise reading out loud, even record yourself, because you may think you can read, but you have to have a lot of support and breath- and as an actor you have to train in that- and you need to sustain a lot of characters. So practise practise practise!
Rose Tomaszewska: What other work have you been doing lately?
Clare Corbett: I’ve just come back from Scarborough, where I was playing Ruth in Blithe Spirit at the Stephen Joseph Theatre- which was fantastic! Before that I played May-Ella in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. So two completely different characters! May-Ella is a Deep South girl who’s abused by her father and accuses a black man of rape. Then Ruth is a poshest of the posh lady from a Noel Coward play.
Rose Tomaszewska: That’s a good reflection of your voice capabilities, doing such different accents.
Clare Corbett: Yes, I do tend to approach a character with a voice and go from there; that’s my training from radio. It’s allowed me to focus on the voice and then find the physicality and everything else which comes with that.
Rose Tomaszewska: Do you listen to your own tapes?
Clare Corbett: Aghh, it’s like watching your own TV performance, it’s horrible. I never used to, and then I was made to at drama school, to listen back to things that weren’t right. And when I do kids voices, which I do a lot of, I listen back to make sure they sound authentic.
I don’t really listen to audio books because I don’t really want to listen to my own voice, I talk enough as it is!
Clare Corbett: I enjoy the kid’s books, because you can go for very silly accents and different characters, whereas the adult books have to stay in the realm of reality. In the Elly Griffiths books, the Irish priest was quite characterful, and Nelson’s mother, I’ve made rather outlandish! I like to create larger than life characters, because I believe there are people out there who do sound like that.
When we see them on TV or hear them, we think ‘ah, there aren’t really people like that,’ but there are! You observe people every day in London, and the characters you see – you think ‘my God!’ I’m a bit of a one for listening to people in restaurants. Sometimes I do use that for inspiration…so watch out!
