About The VoiceGuy
The VoiceGuy focuses on all aspects of voice, speech, text and accent training. It supports the professional and aspiring actor with how-to’s, blog entries, and podcasts on voice work and its integration with the actor process. Go to the Warm-Up Series page (on the tab above) to get to the main content, or subscribe to my feed to be notified when new posts come up.
Who is this VoiceGuy?
The VoiceGuy is Eric Armstrong. Eric is a voice teacher and accent/dialect/language coach for theatre, film and television, based in Toronto, Canada, where he teaches full-time at York University’s Dept. of Theatre & Performance. Currently he’s also the Chair of the department. Eric has been teaching voice for the actor full-time since 1994, and has taught in Canada and the US, at the University of Windsor, Brandeis University, Roosevelt University and York University. He has worked for nationally and internationally recognized companies such as Crow’s Theatre, SoulPepper, & Canadian Stage in Toronto, and The Court Theatre and Steppenwolf in Chicago. Another project that Eric worked on for several years is Glossonomia, Conversations about the Sounds of Speech, a podcast that he shares with Philip Thompson, co-founder of KT Speechwork. In 2022, he published his free Open Educational Resource, Lexical Sets for Actors, through eCampus Ontario.
Eric holds a BFA from Concordia University (Montreal) in Theatre Performance, and an MFA from York University (Toronto) in Acting. His mentors were David Smukler (York, Canada’s National Voice Intensive) and Andrew Wade (Royal Shakespeare Company). He also studied at the Drama Studio, London, and Il Stage Internazzionale di Commedia dell’Arte in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Eric is a certified teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork.
He’s a long-time member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, where he served on the board, as a conference planner, photo editor for the Voice and Speech Review, Founding Director of Technology and Internet Services, and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles, essays and reviews for the VASTA Newsletter, the VASTA Voice, and The Voice and Speech Review. His research work and publications can be viewed through his ORCID iD https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1849-5051.
Eric Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Voice and Speech at the Dept. of Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University. He is a Full Member of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the national organization of professional performers and coaches working in the English-language recorded media. He is a proud member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association and a Senior Editor of the International Dialects of English Archive.