(Applause Books). Standard Speech is an anthology of essays from VASTA (the Voice and Speech Trainers Association) on a variety of topics of interest to actors, voice and speech teachers. Exploring the idea of what should be the standards for good speech this volume offers views from more than 40 top experts on the subject. Also essays on Coaching, Singing, Vocal Health, Verse and Dialect Accent studies. A must for the serious student of voice and speech.

(Applause Books). This book features 67 articles from experts all over the world on the theme of coaching actors for performances in film, broadcast and e-media. Covers a wide variety of topics, from Breathing Principles & Pedagogy to Dialect/Accent Studies to Private Studio Practice.

Stages of Reckoning is a crucial conversation about how racialized bodies and power intersect within actor training spaces. This book provokes embodied and intellectual discomfort for the reader to take risks with their ideologies, identities, and practices and to make new pedagogical choices for students with racialized identities. Centering the voices of actor trainers of color to acknowledge their personal experience and professional pedagogy as theory, this volume illuminates actionable ideas for text work, casting, voice, consent practices, and movement while offering decolonial approaches to current Eurocentric methods. These offerings invite the reader to create spaces where students can bring more of themselves, their communities, and their stories into their training and as fodder for performance making that will lead to a more just world. This book is for people in high/secondary schools, higher education, and private training studios who wish to teach and direct actors of color in ways that more fully honor their multiple identities.

(Applause Books). Potent and empowering voice exercises by the master teachers who devised them! One of the constants that any actor, director or theatre teacher needs is a strong vocal warmup. This valuable, first-of-its-kind resource contains 75 exercises for both solo and group work, contributed by some of the best professionals in the world. There is a brief description of the history and purpose of each exercise followed by the exercise itself. The Voice & Speech Workout comes with audio training that will be especially helpful to the student or theatre professional working alone. Here master teachers run through each exercise in real time (leaving enough time for response). Among the contributors are such important voice teachers as: Frankie Armstrong, Mary Corrigan, Marian Hampton and Dorothy Runk Mennen. The exercises are divided into nine different areas: Getting to Know Your Voice; Stretching, Centering, Releasing, Aligning; Breathing and Supporting; Making Sound (Resonance and Articulation); Exploring Pitch; Projecting and Calling; Integrating Voice, Breath and Text; Integrating Voice and Movement; Exploring Character Voices and Dialects.

(Applause Books). This collection from The Voice and Speech Trainers Association focuses on the voice in stage violence, addressing such questions as: * How does one scream safely? * What are the best ways to orchestrate voices in complex battle scenes? * How to voice coaches work collaboratively with fight directors and the rest of the creative team? * What techniques are used to re-voice violent stunt scenes on film? * How accurate are actor presentations of extreme emotion? * What is missing from many portrayals of domestic violence? Written by leading theatre voice and speech coaches, the volume contains 63 articles, essays, interviews and reviews covering a wide variety of professional concerns.

This volume was conceived as a "best practices" resource for pronunciation and speaking teachers in the way that Vocabulary Myths by Keith S. Folse is one for reading and vocabulary teachers. Like others in the Myths series, this book combines research with good pedagogical practices. The book opens with a Prologue by Linda Grant (author of the Well Said textbook series), which reviews the last four decades of pronunciation teaching, the differences between accent and intelligibility, the rudiments of the English sound system, and other factors related to the ways that pronunciation is learned and taught. The myths challenged in this book are: § Once you’ve been speaking a second language for years, it’s too late to change your pronunciation. (Derwing and Munro) § Pronunciation instruction is not appropriate for beginning-level learners. (Zielinski and Yates) § Pronunciation teaching has to establish in the minds of language learners a set of distinct consonant and vowel sounds. (Field) § Intonation is hard to teach. (Gilbert) § Students would make better progress if they just practiced more. (Grant) § Accent reduction and pronunciation instruction are the same thing. (Thomson) § Teacher training programs provide adequate preparation in how to teach pronunciation (Murphy). The book concludes with an Epilogue by Donna M. Brinton, who synthesizes some of the best practices explored in the volume.

"[This edition] updates the original landmark text and provides a comprehensive review of the latest developments in this fast-growing area of research. Covering both experimental and theoretical perspectives, each of the 11 sections is edited by an internationally recognised authority in the area"--Jacket.