Experiencing Accents A Knight Thompson Speechwork Guide For Acting In Accent

Experiencing Accents: A Knight-Thompson Speechwork® Guide for Acting in Accent presents a comprehensive and systematic approach to accent acquisition for actors. It lays out an accessible and effective set of tools, exercises, and theoretical frameworks grounded in current linguistic science, as well as more than two decades of teaching, actor training, and coaching developed by Knight-Thompson Speechwork®. This book dismantles the notions that accents exist on a spectrum of good and bad or that "neutral," "general," or "standard" can serve as ideals for speech. By de-centering elitist and authoritarian worldviews, it gives actors a path to mobilize their innate language abilities to acquire any accent, relying on descriptive and experiential knowledge. The innovative approach of the Four Ps – People, Prosody, Posture, and Pronunciation – builds cultural competence that honors accents as they exist in the world, increases the physical and perceptive skills of the actor, and provides a rich variety of applications to encourage fluid and embodied accent performance. Each of the Four Ps are investigated and practiced separately and then synthesized in the art of the performer, allowing actors to address the complexity of acting in accent through a deliberate and sequential layering of skills, rendering the final expression of their technique meticulously accurate and deeply authentic. Organized into fifteen modules to correspond with a typical semester, Experiencing Accents is perfect for Theatre students in voice, speech, and accents courses, along with working actors interested in improving their accent work.

Experiencing Speech: A Skills-Based, Panlingual Approach to Actor Training is a beginner’s guide to Knight-Thompson Speechwork®, a method that focuses on universal and inclusive speech training for actors from all language, racial, cultural, and gender backgrounds and identities. This book provides a progression of playful, practical exercises designed to build a truly universal set of speech skills that any actor can use, such as the ability to identify, discern, and execute every sound found in every language on the planet. By observing different types of flow through the vocal tract, vocal tract anatomy, articulator actions, and how these components can be combined, readers will understand and recreate the process by which language is learned. They will then be introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and will practice using the IPA for narrow transcription of speech sounds. The book also offers both an intellectual and physical understanding of oral posture and how it contributes to vocal characterization and accent work. This approach to speech training is descriptive, giving students a wide and diverse set of speech sounds and skills to utilize for any character in any project, and it establishes a foundation for future accent study and acquisition. Experiencing Speech: A Skills-Based, Panlingual Approach to Actor Training is an excellent resource for teachers and students of speech and actor training, as well as aspiring actors looking to diversify their speech skills.

Actors and other professional voice users need to speak clearly and expressively in order to communicate the ideas and emotions of their characters – and themselves. Whatever the native accent of the speaker, this easy communication to the listener must always happen in every moment, onstage, in film or on television; in real life too. This book, an introduction to Knight-Thompson Speechwork, gives speakers the ownership of a vast variety of speech skills and the ability to explore unlimited varieties of speech actions – without imposing a single, unvarying pattern of "good speech". The skills gained through this book enable actors to find the unique way in which a dramatic character embodies the language of the play. They also help any speaker to communicate to a listener with total intelligibility without compromising the speaker's own accent; and to vary speech actions to meet different language needs. Supporting audio provides 116 tracks illustrating the exercises described in the book.

Are you doing a play by Tennessee Williams? Or one of David Mamet's plays set in Chicago? Need to learn a Southern or Boston or New York or Caribbean Islands accent quickly, or do you have plenty of time? Then Teach Yourself Accents – North America: A Handbook for Young Actors and Speakers is for you: an easy-to-use manual full of clear, cogent advice and fascinating information. Contemporary monologues and scenes for two are included, and audio tracks feature extensive practice exercises. Perfect for the young acting student, the book will help anyone beginning a study of accents to get a rapid handle on the subject and use any accent immediately, with an authentic sound. More experienced actors who need an authoritative quick guide for an audition or for role preparation will find it equally useful, as will speakers who want to improve a specific accent or liven up a presentation with an apt anecdote. This second volume of the new Teach Yourself Accents series by Robert Blumenfeld, author of the best-selling Accents: A Manual for Actors, covers General American, the most widely used accent of Standard American English, as well as Northern and Southern regional accents, AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), Hispanic, Caribbean Islands, and Canadian English and French accents.

(Limelight). Do you need to learn an English or Irish accent quickly, or do you have plenty of time? Either way, Teach Yourself Accents The British Isles: A Handbook for Young Actors and Speakers is for you: an easy-to-use manual full of clear, cogent advice and fascinating information. Contemporary monologues and scenes for two are included, and audio tracks feature extensive practice exercises. Perfect for the young acting student, the book will help anyone beginning a study of accents to get a rapid handle on the subject and use any accent immediately, with an authentic sound. More experienced actors who need an authoritative quick guide for an audition or for role preparation will find it equally useful, as will speakers who want to improve a specific accent or liven up a presentation with an apt anecdote. This first volume of the new Teach Yourself Accents series by Robert Blumenfeld, author of the best-selling Accents: A Manual for Actors , covers upper- and middle-class English accents (British Received Pronunciation), London accents, and English provincial accents (Midlands and Yorkshire), as well as Welsh, Scottish, and several Irish accents. Train your ears to hear, and your vocal muscles to respond, and you can do any accent!

ACCENTS A MANUAL FOR ACTING AUDIO ONLINE REVISED EDITION

This book concisely describes ways in which today's standard British English speech differs from the upper-class accent of the last century, Received Pronunciation, which many now find old-fashioned or even comic. In doing so it provides a much-needed update to the existing RP-based descriptions by which the sound system of British English is still known to many around the world. The book opens with an account of the rise and fall of RP, before turning to a systematic analysis of the phonetic developments between RP and contemporary Standard Southern British (SSB) in vowels, consonants, stress, connected speech and intonation. Topics covered include the anti-clockwise vowel shift, the use of glottal stops, 'intrusive r', vocal fry and Uptalk. It concludes with a Mini Dictionary of well over 100 words illustrating the changes described throughout the book, and provides a chart of updated IPA vowel symbols. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in British pronunciation and sound change, including academics in phonetics, phonology, applied linguistics and English language; trainers of English teachers; English teachers themselves; teachers of voice and accent coaches; and students in those areas.

This is a comprehensive workbook for actors, covering the key characteristics and profiles of a wide range of African accents of English. Its unique approach not only addresses the methods and processes by which to go about learning an accent, but also looks in detail at each example. This lets the reader plot their own route through the learning process and tailor not only their working methods but also their own personal idiolect. Full breakdowns of each accent cover: an introduction giving a brief history of the accent, its ethnic background, and its language of origin preparatory warm-up exercises specific to each accent a directory of research materials including documentaries, plays, films and online resources key characteristics such as melody, stress, pace and pitch descriptions of physical articulation in the tongue, lips, jaw, palate and pharynx practice sentences, phoneme tables and worksheets for solo study. African Accents is accompanied by a website at www.routledge.com/cw/mcguire with an extensive online database of audio samples for each accent. The book and audio resources guide actors to develop their own authentic accents, rather than simply to mimic native speakers. This process allows the actor to personalize an accent, and to integrate it into the creation of character rather than to play the accent on top of character.