The Accent Handbook - by Jessica Hammett & Lottie Williams-Burrell (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Need to learn an accent for an audition? Got the part but can't quite grasp the sounds? Want to expand your repertoire?

The Accent Handbook is a novel approach to accent-learning, providing a practical, digestible and customisable way of learning any accent of your choosing.

Drawing on the authors' extensive experience coaching students and leading stage and screen actors, the book offers more than 200 empowering exercises to actively explore and hone accent features.

You can dip in and out or go from cover to cover, depending on your aims, what you're learning or how much time you have.

The book is accompanied by a wide-ranging and diverse library of contemporary accent recordings from across the globe. Uniquely, it also offers a guide to finding accent samples and getting more out of your listening.

A section devoted to accent and acting delves into the powerful interplay between dialect, character and performance. Approachable and encouraging, this book is an essential companion to keep by your side as you take on an accent, from first listen to performance.

Review Quotes

Useful and insightful ... Provides a detailed template which will help you to master any accent which you, the actor, might need ... There's an enormous amount here for drama teachers who might use some of these exercises in class and will find helpful information at every level from forming a single sound to applying the learning to a script.
Ink Pellet

In The Accent Handbook Lottie Williams-Burrell and Jessica Hammett offer a unique, very accessible, and fun approach to exploring the sounds of speech and the acquisition of accents. This book will prove invaluable to any actor, or student of acting, interested in discovering practical approaches to accent acquisition, and will also be of interest to voice teachers wishing to specialize in accent work with student or professional performers.

The step by step approach laid out here outlines all of the elements that need to be explored in order to acquire or to teach an accent. In accessible ways, this book guides the user through a series of simple, practical steps that will enable anyone to identify the key elements of any accent, simultaneously enabling the user to familiarize and equip themselves with the skills, imaginative, analytical and physiological that make it possible to approach and inhabit other accents.
Alex Taylor, Associate Professor, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, UK

This is a remarkable resource. A source of inspiration and support for any actor taking on an accent.
David Tennant

About the Author

Lottie Williams-Burrell is Joint Head of Voice at Mountview, UK, and an accent and dialect coach for stage and screen.

Jessica Hammett is a voice and dialect coach who coaches performers across theatre and film and has worked with Academy and BAFTA award-winning actors.