The Big Gob Squad combines more than 50 years of experience, insight, top tips and essential tools needed to work with any accent or voice issue. The team, comprising Edda Sharpe, Jan Haydn Rowles and Richard Ryder, bring you a user friendly, straight forward and easy to navigate website as we move into a new era of collating accent resources. On this website, they have moved their audio files from the incredibly successful app they created in 2014, to bring you an easier way of collating your audio recordings and creating your own account.
Edda, Jan and Richard are on the call sheets for HBO, Sky and Warner Bros. on the rehearsal schedules for the Royal National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe, and in the address books of leading theatre producers and directors. Their highly skilled yet invisible work, can be heard across the creative industries, from Hollywood to Halifax, London to Lisbon, Darwin to Derby and Tokyo to Tinseltown! Simply, you couldn’t be in better hands.
Edda Sharpe
Edda is a Voice, Accent and Communication coach who has been working with actors and non-actors for over 25 years. After graduating with a PG Dip in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 1996, she was given the rare opportunity to develop her skills as the Head Voice Coach at the Shaw Festival Theatre in Canada, working with some of the most exceptional actors and directors in the country. For over 25 years she has balanced this work with a rich and diverse career coaching professional actors for companies such as the RSC, The Royal Court, The ENO, Manchester Royal Exchange, and The Lyric Hammersmith to name a few.
Her deep interest in personal development led to her to qualifying as an NLP Master Practitioner. As well as streamlining her practice as a coach and teacher this broadened her work as a communication, performance, and leadership coach in the public and private sectors.
Together with Jan, Edda is co-author of HOW TO DO ACCENTS and HOW TO DO STANDARD ENGLISH ACCENTS both available through Bloomsbury.
For more information on Edda visit her website:
Jan Haydn Rowles
Jan has been working as a Voice and Accent Coach for just over 30 years. Her early career years were spent in several of the UK’s leading drama schools. Teaching over a thousand trainee actors provided her with an invaluable insight into an actor’s process and methodology. A step into professional theatre led her to the RSC, numerous regional Repertory Theatre Companies and Shakespeare’s Globe where she was Head of Voice for 5 seasons.
Always keen to develop her practice and coaching technique, she transferred her skills to Film and TV projects, working on many award-winning dramas such as Game of Thrones, Belfast, Will, The Alienist, Pistols, House of the Dragons and The Palace, and alongside such acclaimed directors as Danny Boyle, Shekahr Kaphur, Miguel Sapochnik, Claire Kiln, Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Frears.
Jan is the co-author with Edda Sharpe of How To Do Accents and How To Do Standard English Accents.
Richard Ryder
Richard is a voice, dialect and communication coach who has been working with actors and business clients for more than 20 years. He graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama in 2003 with a M.A. in Voice Studies and went on to hone his voice coaching skills at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in London.
He now manages a busy career in theatre, opera and film productions around the world. His diverse work includes the voice work for ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ in London’s West End, the accent and voice work for Kurt Weill’s opera ‘Streetscene’ at Teatro Real in Madrid and Köln, and executive communication training for international business companies.
Drawing on his previous work as an actor, his NLP accreditation and more than 10,000 hours of voice coaching, Richard aims to inspire, empower and encourage personal and professional development.
For more information on Richard visit his website:
Books
Edda and Jan co-authored the highly successful books How to do Accents and How to do Standard English Accents. Both have enjoyed great success and are available to buy on Amazon.
