Kate Wilson and Laurence O'Dwyer are making fish faces at each other. MThey are seated at a small table in Center Stage's sixth floor rehearsal hall working on the word "call."

Wilson, who is a dialect coach, advises more use of the lips. "Those are the vowels the Brits travel on," she says to O'Dwyer, an actor playing a British architect in Center Stage's production of George Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession."

This is serious work -- the kind of intense attention to craft that can make the difference between a good performance and a superb one. And though O'Dwyer is an award-winning actor and former drama professor, he not only welcomes his sessions with Wilson, he relishes them, frequently breaking into hearty laughter.

"Kate's a real learner and, my Lord, she knows everything. She's very passionate, and one of the great things for me about Kate has been her enthusiasm for [one's] success," O'Dwyer says later.

Wilson's field -- described variously as speech, voice or dialect coach -- is one of those backstage crafts little known to the general public, but considered essential by most theater directors. If she does her job right, audiences probably aren't aware of her contribution at all. And that's fine with her.

"All the people I've learned from say, 'Don't get in the way. Serve the story.' I need to come in and be invisible," Wilson says, her own voice low, warm and melodic.

Humble as Wilson may be, she inspires awe in the directors who work with her. "A huge, huge, huge talent," is the way she is described by Stephen Wadsworth, a Seattle-based director Wilson credits with helping her find her niche in the theater only a few years ago.

"I believe her contribution to the American theater over many, many years will be a major one, deeply felt, and ultimately something that is passed down through her work," he says. "A pathfinder is what she will be."

One indication of the talent of this 32-year-old is her hectic schedule. Here's a recent Thursday, during which she juggled rehearsals for three productions in two cities:

* 9 a.m.-11 a.m. -- Coach acting interns rehearsing Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington.

* 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. -- Work with the cast of Euripides' "The Trojan Women," the current main stage production at the Shakespeare Theatre.

* 2 p.m.-3:15 p.m. -- Drive to Baltimore.

* 3:15 p.m.-5 p.m. -- Attend technical rehearsal of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" at Center Stage.

And there was an interview and dress rehearsal yet to come.

Nor does this schedule take into account the fastidious homework Wilson does on each production. For a play like "Mrs. Warren's Profession," in which it is important to keep the dialect consistent, she starts by identifying all the vowel sounds in the script, underlining each in a different color.

In this case, she used red for the short, taut "o" as in "ostrich"; green for the "ah" as in "father"; pink for the "aw" as in "call"; and orange for the liquid "u" as in "rebuke." Next, she makes up a list of all the words with each of these sounds and another list of proper nouns unique to the play. Each actor gets a copy of these lists.

Besides the color coding, Wilson's script is filled with more detailed pronunciation guides taken from Daniel Jones' "English Pronouncing Dictionary," a volume she turns to so frequently, she has already worn out several copies.

Finally, she begins working with the cast, all the while re-reading her script as often as possible. Approximately three times a week, she meets with each actor for a one-on-one, hourlong session in which she goes over every word the actor will speak on stage, concentrating on rhythm and inflection as well as dialect. And these are only the externals; at its core, her coaching examines not only how characters speak, but also how they think.

Wilson's work on Shaw and Euripides demonstrates the wide range of tasks her job can entail. For example, Irene Lewis, director of "Mrs. Warren's Profession," explains that because Shaw is a playwright with a definite political agenda, the chief problem is, "How do you make it a human being delivering lines that when you first read them sounded like proselytizing?"

"With Shaw," Wilson elaborates, "suddenly an essay will come out of an actor's mouth. You start by making it human. It must sound like what I call 'the nature of thought.' "

"The Trojan Women," on the other hand, features a traditional Greek chorus, which often speaks in unison and sings. So in this case, much of Wilson's coaching has involved working with a half dozen actors at once, focusing on articulation and phrasing.

No matter what the task, attention to detail remains the foundation of Wilson's approach. "It's the kind of detail most directors temperamentally can't get into. I'm astonished at how Kate can go into every comma, semi-colon, period -- things that drive me nuts," says JoAnne Akalaitis, director of the Shakespeare Theatre production. "I think Kate is fantastic."

Though you wouldn't know it from her schedule, Wilson is currently on sabbatical. She has taken a semester off from her teaching duties in New York City at Fordham University and the Stella Adler Conservatory so she can complete her master's degree in voice and speech from Lesley College in Boston. (In the fall, she will begin teaching at the Juilliard School in New York.)

Since winter, Wilson has been spending her sabbatical in Washington, and a voice coach in that city can get some unusual assignments. In February, she found herself coaching Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer, who stepped into a pair of small roles in Shakespeare's "King John" one night for a fund-raiser at the Shakespeare Theatre. "They're both incredibly quick studies," Wilson says. "They dove into the material the way real actors do."

In November, after the public first heard the tapes of Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp's phone conversations, the Washington Post asked her to comment on what we could learn from the women's voices. "Everyone waited to hear her voice," Wilson says of Lewinsky. "There's something really humanizing about the voice. We all expected one thing -- she'd be bimbo-ish and giggly, but you can't discount someone when you hear their voice."

At her parents' home in Syracuse, N.Y., the article was posted on the refrigerator, one tangible answer to the question they had asked their daughter a few years before: "What exactly do you do?" It was a valid question, not only because Wilson is in a highly specialized field, but also because being a voice coach is something she came to gradually.

A theater and English major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she was attending a college production of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" when she was first struck by the power of an actor's voice to make literature sound human. "I remember thinking: This is the most amazing thing," she says.

After graduation, she spent six months in England studying Shakespeare and 18th-century art and architecture at Oxford University and the now-defunct National Shakespeare Conservatory. When she returned to the United States, she saw a production directed by Wadsworth at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., in 1992, and was so impressed, she wrote a letter offering to be his unpaid assistant.

Wilson ended up assisting Wadsworth for four and a half years, eventually with pay. The director recalls the exact moment he recognized her talent as a voice coach. They were in Boston, working on a production of "The Game of Love and Chance," by the 18th-century French playwright Marivaux, and Wilson went off to coach an actress who was having difficulty with a particularly wordy speech.

"When she came back, the actress spoke the speech so beautifully that I got goose bumps, and that was when I knew that [Wilson] had a real genius, and I don't use the word lightly," he says.

Other apprenticeships followed, including one with Elizabeth Smith, head of the voice and speech department at Juilliard. And though Wilson now has all the work she can handle, she doesn't consider her training complete. In a few weeks, she will go to Philadelphia to study alongside throat specialists at the Voice Foundation. "I'm going to work in labs with scopes, put them down my throat, eat chocolate, drink milk, test old wives' tales about not eating dairy products on the day you perform," she says enthusiastically.

It may not be what most people would consider fun, but Wilson can't wait. "I'm flying," she says. "I'm so lucky. I do what I love, and I'm giddy."

'Mrs. Warren's Profession'

Where: Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. most Sundays; matinees at 2 p.m. Sundays and most Saturdays, 1 p.m. April 7 and 8. Through May 2

Tickets: $10-$40

Call: 410-332-0033

"The Trojan Women"

Where: Shakespeare Theatre, 450 Seventh St. N.W., Washington

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; matinees at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, noon May 5 and 6. Through May 8

Tickets: $14-$56

Call: 202-547-1122

Pub Date: 04/04/99