25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
From stutter to stage star: David Everett Moore's journey in theater
When David Everett Moore landed his first big role in a school play, he had an epiphany.
'That was the first time that I noticed that I was on stage speaking these lines, and I didn't stutter,' he told the Chronicle. 'And I was like, 'What? Interesting! I didn't know that was possible! ''
He was 12 years old in Los Angeles and the play was 'Annie Get Your Gun.' Discovering that onstage he could speak without his stutter 'was freeing. It was empowering,' he recalls.
Now 46, the Berkeley resident and professional union actor doesn't think of the speech impediment he's had since early childhood as a tragedy or a cage.
More Information
'Crumbs From the Table of Joy': Written by Lynn Nottage. Directed by Elizabeth Carter. Opens Saturday, April 26. Through May 25. $38-$68. Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. 510-843-4822.
Instead, Moore learned, 'It has to do with flow.' He contrasted extemporaneous speech with recited lines or music: 'When words are already living in your brain, when it's already memorized, there's a flow for that.' That's especially true with Shakespeare, with its rhythmic iambic pentameter, which Moore frequently performs.
Moore, currently performing in Lynn Nottage's 'Crumbs From the Table of Joy' at Aurora Theatre, said that to get where he is now, he suffered less prejudice than one might think. But the system he had to devise for himself requires a dedication to craft that might make many lesser men quit.
'There's never been a point where I was like, 'Oh, I should give up acting because of this,'' he said.
And he's hardly the only public-facing professional with a speech impediment; former President Joe Biden, James Earl Jones and Samuel L. Jackson all had or have stutters.
Moore's stammer isn't severe, but you do notice it in conversation. When he meets people for the first time, he might ask them not to suggest words to him when he pauses. 'I know the word; I'm just having trouble getting it out,' he said.
In prior years, when he'd meet new collaborators in audition or rehearsal rooms, he'd explain that he speaks more fluidly onstage, 'just to make sure they knew I could do it,' he said. Then one time, he gave no preamble, and no one ever raised an eyebrow. Same thing every time after that.
Eventually, he realized that his reputation and resumé, with roles at San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Crowded Fire Theater and Colorado Shakespeare Festival among many others, speak for themselves.
Victoria Evans Erville, a playwright, director and erstwhile leader of the now-defunct TheatreFirst, described Moore as an ideal actor, and he credits her with seeing his potential before he could.
'When he acts, you don't ever hear it, ever,' she said of his speech impediment. Instead, his other qualities shine: his focus, bravery and willingness to play, his ability to work with actors of any experience level.
Most of all, he doesn't have to be in the spotlight if it doesn't serve the story. 'He loves the craft more than he loves himself,' she said.
But being onstage doesn't 100% cure his stammer, Moore cautioned. He still occasionally stutters in performance, such as that one time in 'Much Ado About Nothing' at Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
'I just got stuck onstage in front of 1,100 people,' he recalled. 'The play ground to a halt because I couldn't get the word out. It was probably like five seconds, but five seconds onstage is an eternity.'
After he exited, one of the show's more seasoned actors pulled him aside to say, 'Hey, it's not your fault' — a gift he still remembers fondly.
Over time, Moore has learned more about how his brain works and developed mitigation strategies to decrease the likelihood of such incidents. For example, he learned that words that start with hard consonants followed by short vowels are harder for him. 'Dine' is easy; 'dinner,' not so much. When he first reads a script aloud to himself, he notes all the words that could be 'spicy,' he said with a laugh.
He tries to make sure he's at or toward the beginning of a breath on tough words, a bit like the way singers and reed and brass players might plot where in a score they inhale. Or he'll imagine other words coming before a tough word, but not say them, and then mentally put a little music to the whole phrase as well. All the audience hears is 'dinner is served,' but in his head he appends 'what time shall I tell them that' to the beginning.
All professional actors learn to be aware of where they're holding tension in their bodies, but for Moore the practice takes on additional importance. If he gets stuck on a word, he tries to take a 'mental photograph' of his physicality and ask himself, 'Is the tension in my throat? Is there tension in the neck muscles, or in my tongue?' Then, if he identifies the spot, he can try to release it or breathe through it.
Sometimes he simply has to slow down, even when a play's scene demands urgency, presenting an intriguing artistic challenge of 'playing the tension of the moment without bringing physical tension,' as Moore put it.
When all else fails, Moore might ask a director for permission to change a word in a script.
Surveying his career, Moore attributes his success first to his parents, who took him to see theater growing up, which is 'still not commonplace for Black people,' he said. As a young boy, he saw Dulé Hill ('The West Wing') in a national tour of 'The Tap Dance Kid,' which showed him that people who look like him can be actors.
'Representation matters,' he said.
Now he tries to pay that forward. He works frequently as a teaching artist, and once, working with Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he gave a talkback to students, showing them that the actor they'd just seen onstage speaks with a stutter. Afterward, a student wrote him a note saying he made her feel better about her own speech impediment.
'That's everything,' Moore said.
When other theater artists ask him for advice about working with speech impediments, he makes it a point to give them however much time they need, too.
I thought I remembered docking Moore for vocal stumbles in my reviews of his work, before I learned about his speech impediment, but then didn't find any evidence in the Chronicle's archives. Still, I can say I at least thought about doing so.
I recently asked Moore what he might think about such a criticism.
'If the person said that it took away from their enjoyment of the experience,' he replied, 'then I I would encourage that person to ask themselves why it took them out of it.'
Flawlessness is illusory anyway, he noted: 'Seeing something different than my expectations doesn't make that thing bad.'
