Eric Armstrong

SENIOR EDITOR, CENTRAL CANADA
Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director, York University (Toronto)

Contributions to IDEA:

(Ontario 10-33 were produced in collaboration with John Fleming, Senior Editor for Ontario, while Manitoba 1, Newfoundland 4 and 5, Ontario 35 and 36, and Sri Lanka 2 were produced with Joel Edmiston)

Belarus 1 | Ghana 1 | Iceland 3 | Illinois 3 | Illinois 4 | Illinois 5 | Illinois 6 | Illinois 7 | Illinois 8 | Manitoba 1 | Newfoundland 4 | Newfoundland 5 | New York 7 | New York 8 | New York 9 | New York 10 | Ontario 9 | Ontario 10 | Ontario 11 | Ontario 12 | Ontario 13 | Ontario 14 | Ontario 15 | Ontario 16 | Ontario 17 | Ontario 18 | Ontario 19 | Ontario 20 | Ontario 21 | Ontario 22 | Ontario 23 | Ontario 24 | Ontario 25 | Ontario 26 | Ontario 27 | Ontario 28 | Ontario 29 | Ontario 30 | Ontario 31 | Ontario 32 | Ontario 33 | Ontario 35 | Sri Lanka 2

Bio: Eric Armstrong works as an accent/dialect coach for theatre, film, television, and gaming. He also teaches voice, speech, dialects/accents, and text in the BFA acting program at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Eric holds a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and an MFA from York University, as well as certificates from The Drama Studio, London UK, and The International Commedia Dell’Arte Training Workshop, in Reggio Emilio, Italy. He trained with David Smukler both at York and at Canada’s National Voice Intensive, where he went on to be a full-time faculty member. He has taught full-time at university programs in Toronto, Windsor, Boston, and Chicago. He is a Certified Teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork.

His professional dialect coaching/design for theatre includes work for Project Humanity, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Volcano Theatre, Canadian Stage, Crow’s Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Soulpepper, Steppenwolf, and Court Theatre; coaching for film and television highlights include designing the Belter accents for seasons 1-3 and 5-6 of Prime Video’s The Expanse, as well as coaching actors Iain Glen, Eric Bana, Kelly Macdonald, America Ferrera, Jared Harris, Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman, and Tom Wilkinson.

He is a former director and board member of VASTA and was honored with the VASTA Leadership and Service award in 2006. He has presented countless times at the annual VASTA conference. Recently he focused on accent resources for under-represented groups, most notably Indigenous Accents in two presentations with his co-investigator, Shannon Vickers; Jamaican for a panel on Accents of the African Diaspora; Tamil as part of the panel on South Asian Accents; Iceland for a panel on Scandinavian Accents; and Japanese for the panel on Asian Accents. He has published numerous articles and reviews in the Voice and Speech Review and was the recipient (with his co-authors) of the 2020 Dudley Knight Award for Outstanding Vocal Scholarship for the article “Accent and Language Training for the Indigenous Performer: Results of Four Focus Groups.” He has written a blog on voice training for the actor at voiceguy.ca and was co-host, with Phil Thompson, of the podcast Glossonomia, conversations on the sounds of speech.

Contact: earmstro@yorku.ca; http://voiceguy.ca/about