Biography
Warm and authoritative, playful or sensual, emotive and intelligent – Ailsa Piper’s voice is the perfect complement to your words. A born collaborator, she loves the to-and-fro that occurs between the booth and the production team.
In her decades behind microphones all over Australia, Ailsa has been the reassuring voice of government campaigns and the enticing tones of chocolate bars! She has introduced corporate brands and weekly specials, brought calming tones to heartbreaking documentaries and narrated some of Australia’s best-loved and most-lauded audiobooks – including her own
Ailsa has had three books published. First was the much-loved travel memoir, Sinning Across Spain, in which she documented her 1300 kilometre walk carrying the transgressions of others – arguably a crazy undertaking but it proved rewarding in myriad unexpected ways.
The second was The Attachment: Letters From a Most Unusual Friendship, described by some as a cross between the classics 84 Charing Cross Road and Tuesdays With Morrie.
Most recently, her book For Life came out to glowing reviews. A big-hearted love song to the natural world, it’s also an acknowledgement that we live most fully when we open our eyes to our mortality. It’s also a hymn to seahorses and peregrine falcons!
Ailsa is an inspiring public speaker, and a much-admired interviewer of other writers at festivals and conferences, which, along with her work voicing audiobooks, allows her to claim that she literally reads for a living.
In her down-time, she’s a passionate (some say obsessive) walker, and she swims all year, rain or shine.
Whether in her own manuscript, or your fifteen second TV track, Ailsa brings experience, curiosity, versatility and playfulness. She also brings enormous gratitude at getting away from the solitude of her own desk!
Book Ailsa Piper for your next script today, by contacting the team at EM Voices.
Ailsa Piper
Sydney
Gender:
FemaleAccent:
BritishLanguages:
EnglishAge Range:
30-40, 40-50, 50+Talent Range:
Commercial, Non-Commercial/Narration, Promos, Accents, Singing
I love working with Ailsa for a million reasons, but mostly because she’s a writer and has a writer’s sensibility. With Ailsa, there’s a story being told in every read. Even scripts that have been butchered and added to and totally turned upside down by a marketing department somehow end up telling a coherent story when Ailsa reads them. We’ve done a lot of stuff in the last thirty years, and every syllable of it has been better for Ailsa’s interpretive skills.
We have had the great pleasure of having Ailsa narrate several of our audiobooks. Three words come to mind when it comes to her work – brilliant, intuitive and professional. No matter what she narrates, be it the multiple award-winning and harrowing novel The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood or her very own collection of letters in The Attachment – Ailsa brings a natural sensitivity to the text that not only engages the listener but stays true to the essence of the book. You can tell she gives her all to a project, from prep to delivery, and is simply a delight to work with!
I had the great pleasure of working with Ailsa Piper on a documentary for SBS entitled “The Surgeon and the Soldier”. When we were casting for a narrator, we found that Ailsa had just the right combination of warmth and authority. Directing her in the studio was a joy. Ailsa’s experience both as an actor and as a director in her own right, meant that she was fully inside the text which made adjustments easy. She also offered up alternative takes when required while managing to keep the overall tone unified. The broadcaster was thrilled with the result and so was the production team. I would have no hesitation in recommending Ailsa for any sort of voice over or narration work.
If I’m looking for a voice that’s warm, natural and reassuring, then Ailsa is top of my list.
Not only is she a dream to work with in the studio, Ailsa is one of the loveliest people you’ll ever meet.
