Hi tbeagley,
I’m sorry for the issue. Since this is a bug it will require a plugin update to fix, so even if I were in the same timezone as you I wouldn’t be able to find the issue, fix it, test the fix and push the update quickly enough for you to publish today, but I understand that you have time pressure and that this is a blocker. It is now the top priority and I’ll have more info for you tomorrow.
I expect that a workaround that will work right now would be to keep it in a root level view controller and message it from child view controllers with delegate methods or notifications to control the speech.