UPDATES: ……
2023 – The year so far has been as busy as ever! Knight Frank speaker training, RADA Business coaching, quite a few accent sessions with actors. Dialect work for Dear England at the National Theatre, which has had wonderful responses. The next big project will be Backstairs Billy for the Michael Grandage Company later on this summer.
2022 – The Southbury Child finally went into production at Chichester Festival Theatre and The Bridge Theatre in London. Orlando at the Garrick Theatre in London was another favourite show I worked on as well as Sons of the Prophet at Hampstead Theatre. I also, did some enjoyable and fruitful work in the corporate world, with companies such as Knight Frank, CMT-London, Old Vic Corporate, RADA Business and Hoare Lea.
2021 – A busy year with a great mix of theatre, opera, film and corporate work and all on-line. Apart from Book Of Dust at the Bridge Theatre, London and what a joy it was to be back in the room working with people
2020 – Well we all know what happened this year!
2019 – UK tour of Glengarry Glen Ross will start rehearsals in January, so it’s looking like a busy year ahead again. Richard will be in Cologne in the Spring for Street Scene and My Fair Lady followed by pre production work for A Starry Messenger in London’s West End.
2018 – There have been a number of corporate jobs with RADA Business this year all over Europe, and in September 2018 Richard will be flying to Hong Kong for a business coaching job with CVC.
The UK tour of Kinky Boots starts rehearsal in August 2018 and will be opening in Northampton, so lots of Northampton accent support will be required!
At the end of June 2018, Six Minutes to Midnight with Eddie Izzard, Judi Dench and Carla Juri, went into production and Richard Ryder worked on a number of accents with some of the cast including some accent and voice support for Eddie Izzard and Carla Juri.
Street Scene by Kurt Weill opened at Teatro Real in Madrid last week, February 2018, with a wonderful array of 1930’s New York accents. Richard returns to Madrid in May 2018, to work on the production again.
Later in 2018, Holmes and Watson will be released. Richard Ryder worked on set with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly on their RP for the film.
2017 – Richard worked on Desire Under The Elms at Sheffield Crucible with Matthew Kelly, Labour Of Love at the Noel Coward Theatre, London, with Tamsin Greig and Martin Freeman and Glengarry Glen Ross at the Playhouse Theatre, London with Christian Slater.
Richard Ryder was company voice coach on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for its opening production in London’s West End Summer 2016.
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This fascination with accents and voice lead me to the world renowned MA Voice Studies Course at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2003. I then taught full-time as a voice teacher at East 15 Acting School for nine years and the last four of those years I was Head of Voice at the Southend campus. I then went on to work at the Royal Shakespeare Company for six months followed by 18 months as assistant to the Head of Voice at the National Theatre, London.
I’ve also taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD). In recent years the professional work has taken over and therefore I haven’t been able to continue the work in drama schools… but the training of actors doesn’t stop. Many big theatre companies employ actors who don’t have a drama school training because of the wonderful talent they bring to a role. In some cases those years spent working in drama schools has to be distilled into a four or six week period in order to support those actors who have to use their voices in big theatre spaces and still be connected to truth and be heard.
I regularly work in major regional and West End theatres and in 2015 spent another five months in the voice department of the NT coaching a number of shows.
My work also includes television and film productions along with business voice coaching for companies such as:
RADA business, old vic training and cmt-london.
I manage to balance my time between coaching for the creative industries and for the corporate world and you can see all my recent work on the CV pages, which is regularly updated.
One of my recent great achievements is to have created an accent app for actors with my team ‘The Big Gob Squad’. This is free to download at the App Store and Google play and is called The Accent Kit.
My agent for Accent coaching is Upson Edwards.
As an accent and voice specialist I draw on previous work as an actor, NLP accreditation and more than 10,000 hours of voice coaching with which I aim to inspire, empower and encourage personal and professional development.