Midlands Voice Conference 2019

Tim Charrington

Tim has a background as a professional actor and director, graduating from Central School of Speech and Drama in 1980. Returning to take the Advanced Diploma in Voice Studies in 1988, Tim has over 30 years experience as an accent and dialect coach. He has taught at many UK leading drama schools including LAMDA and Drama Centre. He works extensively on film, TV and theatre productions and privately with professional actors.

Full biog coming soon...

Aundrea Fudge

Aundrea is an accent/dialect and speech coach from New York. She has degrees in Linguistics and English literature, a certificate in TESOL, and singing training in Opera and Musical Theatre. Before moving to London Aundrea worked as an ESL teacher in South Korea. In New York, she split her time between working as a writing tutor at Manhattan Community College and with actors helping mainly with accents and self-tapes for auditions. While in London Aundrea has taught both accent and voice at the London College of Music, Drama Studio, East 15 Southend, and The University of Northampton. Aundrea recently finishing her MFA in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. For more information, please visit www.aundreafudge.com

Deborah Garvey

Deborah is a voice, accent and singing coach with an MA in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where she joined the faculty as Lecturer in Voice on the MA/MFA Voice Studies and BA Acting Collaborative and Devised Theatre programmes in 2014.  She is a Linklater teacher and a fellow of the HEA and has delivered conference papers on the spoken-sung voice and, more recently, on the politics of RP in actor training at ATHE Boston 2018.  Recent voice and accent coaching includes Vanessa and Virginia at the Riverside Studios and POT at the Ovalhouse.  Deborah is also a composer with a particular interest in devised theatre making contexts. She is about to join the voice team as a voice and speech tutor at RADA.

Barbara Houseman

With a career spanning almost forty years as a voice, text and acting coach and a director, Barbara Houseman is well established in the industry and works extensively as a voice and text coach in the West End.  After seven years dividing her time between directing and voice work, she spent six years in the world renowned Voice Department at the Royal Shakespeare Company, working alongside Cicely Berry and Andrew Wade and then became Associate Director at the Young Vic in London, working alongside Tim Supple. Since 1998 she has worked freelance; coaching voice, text and acting and working as an associate director. Among other clients she coaches Daniel Radcliffe and Jude Law, when they are preparing projects for stage and screen. She is the author of Finding Your Voice and Targeting Text (and Subtext) both published by Nick Hern Books. Find out more at www.barbarahouseman.com

Yvonne Morley

Yvonne has been established as a versatile voice teacher and vocal coach for over thirty-five years at home and abroad (Canada, America, Europe and the Middle East). She works with actors, singers and dancers on stage, screen and in the studio. She has been involved in actor training for many years, including Department head for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Yvonne is currently an associate with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal National Theatre’s Voice departments. She specialises in vocal profiling and character work, having developed a safe approach to manipulating and transforming voice safely. She is currently writing a book on her approach. Find out more at www.yourvoicebox.co.uk

Edda Sharpe

As a facilitator, teacher, trainer and coach, I strive to liberate, educate, and inspire each individual to unlock their personal talent and develop their unique potential.

I have a passion for accents and have with 20 years’ experience as a dialect coach under my belt. My first book 'How To Do Accents', was published in 2007, co-written with Jan Haydn Rowles, with our second book, 'How To Do Standard English Accents', following shortly afterward. We also now have a ground-breaking app called The ACCENT Kit App, giving actors access to first-class, well-structured resources for accent learning.

I have taught at most of the major drama schools, including LAMDA, Mountview, GSA, and CSSD, as well as serving as of Head of Voice at E15 Acting School for three years. I taught the accents module on the MA voice studies course at CSSD for 8 years, where I continue to provide specialist workshops, and have had the great privilege of working for The Shaw Festival Theatre in Canada as Head of Voice for 19 years. In 2003 I left teaching to become a freelance coach, since which I have been fortunate enough to as coach for the RSC, Theatre Royal Stratford East, The Trafalgar Studios, Theatre Royal Bath, The Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, Shakespeare’s Globe, Birmingham Rep, TamashaTheatre Co, and  The Kiln  among many others. I continue to provide master classes and specialist workshops for MA Voice courses, theatre schools, visiting students, and theatre organisations.

In recent years my deep interest in personal development led to me to qualifying as an NLP Master Practitioner. As well as streamlining my practice as a coach and teacher it as also broadened my work as a communication, performance and leadership coach in the public and private sectors, I help clients to become vocally persuasive and engaging, to understand the physiology of leadership, to deliver challenging messages, to overcome their obstacles and achieve their professional goals.

Anne-Marie Speed

Anne-Marie has been working as a voice teacher to actors and singing teacher and vocal coach for almost 30 years.  Her varied and extensive practice includes work with classical actors, international film stars, artists in national theatre companies, leads in West End musicals, actors in film and television and platinum selling pop artists.

 She acts as a vocal consultant to West End production companies, major agents as well as individuals, working as a trouble-shooter and problem solver in both speaking and singing.

 She is also one of the most experienced teachers and trainers of the Estill Model in the world and was trained by and interned for Jo Estill many times. She has pioneered the use of the Estill Model in the teaching of actors, and specialises in the integration of speaking with singing, especially musical theatre.

  She established The Voice Explained (Anne-Marie Speed & Associates) in 2001. Since then she has regularly run popular workshops in Voice, Performance and the Estill Model both in the UK and internationally. She has been Professor of Spoken Word on the Musical Theatre course at the Royal Academy of Music since the course started in 1994 and was President of the British Voice Association 2001-2002.

  During this time, she has also established herself as one of the UK’s leading accent coaches, working on major films, TV shows and West End productions.

 Since 2009 she has worked as a vocal consultant for Sony Records and SyCo and then Universal.

 In 2011, she was asked to be the vocal coach on Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor and also worked on BGT in 2012.

   She has been voice, singing and dialect coach on dozens of West End shows and plays, some of the most recent being: being: From Here to Eternity which opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre, the Menier Chocolate Factory revival production of Candide, Funny Girl at the Savoy Theatre, provided voice and dialect work for An American in Paris at the Dominion Theatre in London, the new production of Obsession directed by Ivo van Hove at the Barbican, the new London production of Heathers at The Other Palace in London, vocal coach on Everybody’s Talking About Jamie in the West End (as well as very much enjoying working with the cast of the new film), vocal and accent coach on the touring production of Hair, directed by Jonathan O’Boyle, vocal coach on The Man of La Mancha at the Coliseum directed by Lonnie Price. Recently she has been vocal coach on Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at the London Palladium and Ivan and the Dogs at the Young Vic. Her television work includes the critically acclaimed ITV drama Cilla. She was vocal coach to major leads in the new live action movie Beauty and the Beast for Disney

  Since 2010, Anne-Marie has been training teachers in the Estill Model (Estill Master Trainers), embedding it within a broader pedagogical training. She now has more than 70 teacher trainees who have ether completed or who are currently in training. They are much in demand and head or teach at some of the UK’s most prestigious training programmes, including musical theatre, drama schools and classical course.

  Her book on voice training for actors is coming along swimmingly and will be completed this year. Really.