Workshops

There is an upcoming workshop in Louis Colaianni’s Phonetic Pillows to be held in London (UK) on April 5th, 6th and 7th. The workshop will be given by Robin Christian-McNair, of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Full details of the workshop can be viewed or downloaded here.

News/Interviews

Ben coached A Lesson From Aloes at Hartford Stage in April/May 2018, directed by Darko Tresnjak. It had rave reviews and The Wall St Journal called it "one of the finest revivals of an Athol Fugard play that I’ve had the good luck to see" and praised the "meticulously coached South African accents."

There was an interview with Ben in the production Playbill.  Read it here.

 Book suggestions

To be honest, I personally find it hard to learn voice work from a book. Having said that, I have found the following books helpful for me and others. They are available from theatre bookshops and online.

Voice for Actors

Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linkater.

The Actor Speaks by Patsy Rodenburg. Ms Rodenburg’s book The Right to Speak is, in my opinion, a good introductory book for those coming to voice for the first time.

Voice and the Actor by Cicely Berry.

If you’re a Musical Theatre actor, I suggest you go for one of the books above. I’ve not found a book I can recommend that specialises in speaking voice for Musical Theatre.

Accent and Dialect

There are a number of accent/dialect learning books out there which, in my opinion, are varied in their efficacy and tend to be either British or American centred in terms of sounds. In the past, I have suggested the following to actors who want to do accent work for themselves before working with a coach.

How To Do Accents by Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn-Rowles.

The only resource I recommend for learning specific accents for actors is the series of CD’s or downloads created by Gillian Lane-Plescia. They are available as downloads from her website or from theatre bookshops.