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Eric Armstrong

Faculty Profile Image

Theatre

Eric Armstrong

Chair
Professor

earmstro@yorku.ca

Education

BFA (Concordia), MFA (York)

Biography

Eric Armstrong works as an accent/dialect coach for theatre, film, television and gaming. He is the Chair of the Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance and teaches voice, speech, dialects/accents, and text in the BFA acting program. Eric is a Full Professor and received the 2022 Senior Teaching Award from the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design.

Eric holds a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and an MFA from York University, as well as certificates from The Drama Studio, London UK, The International Commedia Dell'Arte Training Workshop, in Reggio Emilio, Italy, and is certified in Knight-Thompson Speechwork. 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 for over thirty years in Toronto, Windsor, Boston and Chicago.

His Professional dialect coaching/design for theatre includes work for Project Humanity, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Volcano TheatreCanadian 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 Prime Video’s The Expanse, as well as coaching actors Iain Glen, Felicity Jones, 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. He has presented countless times at the annual VASTA conference; he has frequently focused on accent resources for under-represented groups. He is a Senior Editor for The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). He is a member of the Canada’s National Voice Association and he presented on Voice for Devising as part of the 2024 NVA Conference. He has published numerous articles and reviews in the Voice and Speech Review, and was the recipient of its Dudley Knight Award for Outstanding Vocal Scholarship. Most recently, he published an Open Educational Resource, the eBook Lexical Sets for Actors on the eCampusOntario hub, which is used by learners, educators, and coaches for accent training around the English-speaking world.