A faculty member and two seniors recently participated in a professional vocal project that used skills taught at JA. Director of Performing Arts Kerri Sanders and students Boston Hollingsworth and Sydney Thaxton served as voice talent for an audiobook project released on Audible in November.
The project is a devotional series called “Jesus With Us,” recorded for Whitaker House, the largest Christian book distributor in the country. The distribution arm of the business is Anchor Distributors. It follows the life of Jesus chronologically.
Collaborative experience for students
The Institute for Southern Storytelling at Mississippi College produced the audiobooks. Whitaker House wanted a variety of voices, so one of the four contributing writers, JA parent Anthony Thaxton, knew he could find readers among the JA performing arts students based on his previous work with JA. Thaxton and his team are producing a documentary of “We Shall By Morning,” a play about the life of Nellie Bly written by Sanders and premiered by JA students. The school is also exploring other collaborative experiences for students through the Institute for Southern Storytelling.
Expressing faith through devotional reading
Sanders and the students each read a week of devotionals for the audiobook project. “It was a pleasure to watch them in a professional environment, conducting themselves with confidence and maturity,” said Sanders. “It was also very beneficial for my students to see their teacher working in a professional environment. I was able to model for them how to interact, how to take direction and criticism, and how to interpret material creatively. Doing all of this on a devotional series was even more special. I so enjoyed being able to experience our faith collectively in this way.”
“I’ve always respected the quality of Jackson Academy- its students, facilities, programs, graphics, communications, staff… just everything,” said Anthony Thaxton, devotional writer. “So it was just logical for us to look to JA to complete our roster of readers for this project. Kerri is a total professional, and she was perfect. We also needed some younger voices. Sydney embraced the task and did a great job. But finding a male teenage voice was going to be the biggest challenge. Boston Hollingsworth agreed to read for us and came prepared, reading his scripts with an earnest, genuine quality. We were very proud of Boston, Sydney, and Kerri. They are all part of what makes JA a great place to find talent.”
Putting lessons taught at JA into practice
Sydney felt that the skills she had learned at JA were beneficial in her first professional voice-acting work. “My theatre experience helped me find the best tone to get the text’s message across, while my experiences with reading aloud in class helped me not to be nervous about having my voice heard,” she explained. “I read through the text aloud a few times and made notes on how to read. It was also just a matter of trial by error; as I read with different tones and inflections, I figured out what worked best.”
The students also had to learn about the appropriate pace. “It was so weird having to slow down so much in the recording room. Since I am a fast reader, this felt like reading at a snail’s pace!” she said. “I got much more used to the process by the end, though, and would love to do this again sometime.”
The audiobook is available now on Audible and other audiobook platforms. To learn more about the devotional series, visit the “Jesus With Us” page on Audible.com.
