Paul Meier
Professor Meier is the founder and director of the International Dialects of English Archive, the world's first online archive of global accent and dialect samples designed for theatre and film artists.
In his thirty-year career in the US and his native England, Paul has worked as an actor, director, voice and speech instructor, and dialect coach in the theatre, in films, on the radio and on television. His dialect instruction materials are available through Paul Meier Dialect Services. His book Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen, (350 pages, 24 dialects, 12 accompanying CDs) is a leading textbook in theatre departments and convservatories around the world.
As a dialect coach/consultant for feature films he lists:
For a complete list, see his listing on the Internet Movie Data Base .
In the theatre, his voice, speech and dialect coaching credits top one hundred productions in professional and academic companies. Recent productions include The Glass Menagerie, starring Diana Hardcastle, at the Palace Theatre, Watford, England; The Gut Girls and Dancing at Lughnasa at the University of Kansas; Wild Oats at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Henceforward at the Heartland Theatre of Kansas City; Steel Magnolias and South Pacific at the New Theatre, Kansas City; and The Lost Colony in Manteo, North Carolina.
Paul has taught and given master classes at many conservatories and universities in London and America including RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), The Webber Douglas School, The Drama Studio, The City Literary Institute, The North Carolina School of the Arts, Mountview Theatre School, and currently, The Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Kansas where he is a professor and Head of Voice.
His own training was as an actor at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in London while academically he holds a degree in English and American Literature from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and a Certificate of Proficiency from the University of London and the International Phonetics Association.
As an actor Paul has appeared in films such as Ride With The Devil, Stolen Women, and Cross of Fire while on stage he has played Henry Higgins in several productions of My Fair Lady and Pygmalion. He appeared on over one hundred radio dramas with stars such as Derek Jacobi, Richard Burton, Paul Schofield, and Flora Robson during his tenure with the BBC Drama Repertory Company.
His directing credits number over thirty productions. Shakespeare productions he has mounted include Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure.
Published articles include King of Infinite Space: Tony Richardson's Hamlet, With Utter Clarity: an Interview with Kenneth Branagh, and In Quest of Sacred Theatre.
Shakespeare's prosody is a particular passion for Paul. Among the many master classes he has given on the subject was one at Shakespeare's Globe, in the company's inaugural season in 1997.
As a voice-over artist, Paul has been heard in national commercials forWal-mart, Coca-Cola, Sprint, Blockbuster Video, Bayer and Hallmark Cards, while he has also recorded audio-books such as Anthem, Flatland, The Baghavad Gita and The Stanzas of Dzyan on CD.