Digital Theatre and Drama Online Video Resources

Beginner

Unlocking Voice: The Unlocked: Creating a Character series offers a range of short, accessible e-learning videos demonstrating how to develop an authentic and believable character. Each episode focuses on skill-related components and includes activities to check knowledge and extend learning. This episode introduces the voice and can be used alongside the Teacher Notes and Student Workbook comprising ready-made activities and assessment strategies for learning about the vocal traits of characters. *Contains flashing lights

Spotlight On: Voice: Spotlight On: Theatre Foundations is a series of short e-learning videos and written resources introducing essential topics and skills needed to develop knowledge and understanding of theatre. This episode shines a light on Voice, covering key vocal elements and terminology with examples from resources on Digital Theatre+

Intermediate

Barbara Houseman Masterclass: Developing your voice: In this masterclass with world-renowned voice and text coach Barbara Houseman, students can follow along with Houseman’s process, getting real insight into the tools and techniques used by professional actors. Houseman explains in detail her techniques for building vocal strength and understanding text, as well as demonstrating each of the exercises and advising students on the practical application of her methods

Barbara Houseman on Voice and Text:  Barbara explains dividing a text into three components: structure, sounds and words, and how language can only transform an audience, if it is transforming the person delivering it. Barbara talks about working backwards with actors, from what they want to achieve on stage, and of the importance of working in partnership with performers, who are, in essence, the experts on themselves.

Physical Actor Training A-Z: Resource contains a number of training exercises including on voice and articulation, breath etc. 

Advanced

Barbara Houseman Masterclass: Brining text to life: In this masterclass with world-renowned voice and text coach Barbara Houseman, students can follow along with Houseman’s process, getting real insight into the tools and techniques used by professional actors. Houseman explains in detail her techniques for building vocal strength and understanding text, as well as demonstrating each of the exercises and advising students on the practical application of her methods.

On Voice: Lyn Darnley: Head of Text, Voice and Artist Development at the RSC, Lyn Darnley has worked with a wide array of performers over the years. She discusses the twofold nature of a voice coach's role in exploring how both physical preparation and exercise, and deep, considered exploration of text can enrich an actor's performance.

Voice Into Acting: Integrating voice and the Stanislavski approach: Christina Gutekunst and John Gillett unite their depth of experience in voice training and acting to create an integrated and comprehensive approach informed by Stanislavski and his successors

Websites 

The British Library Sound Archive - Currently unavailable due to the 2023 cyber attack on the British Library. One of the largest collections of sounds in the world including samples of regional accents and dialects. 

IDEA: International dialects of English - Internet's first archive of primary source recordings of English language dialects as heard around the world. 

Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts Accent and Dialect Collection - The WAAPA Accent and Dialect Collection is a free resource for theatre practitioners and researchers that offers over 380 examples of the English spoken word from 68 countries of origin. 

The Speech and Accents Archive: The speech accent archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyse the accents of different English speakers.

The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection: Contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. 

MEDEA (Media E-Learning Dialects for English Actors) - Accents and dialects resource from the Centre for Voice in Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.