By Simi Horwitz
"Speech has become politicized," says dialect coach Deborah Hecht. "Asking an actor to lose his accent or dialect is seen by some as a put-down of his ethnicity and identity. In any case, it's much more difficult to lose a speech pattern than to gain one. It's the actor's nature to put something on."
Hecht, who has trained actors in various dialects for Broadway's "Titanic," "King and I," and "The Last Night of Ballyhoo," among many others, is not alone in her viewpoint. Dialect coaches Elizabeth Smith ("Elephant Man," "Tommy," "Me and My Girl") and Tim Monich agree. Monich has spent the last 14 years on film sets, and more recently in theatre. The speech in Roundabout Theatre Company's "Cabaret" and "You Never Can Tell" represents his handiwork.
"Film is much more difficult from the point of view of teaching dialects," he says. "The film convention demands a level of realism, if not naturalism. Anything that's false in a movie shows up big. On the other hand, in film you have the safety net of looping [re-recording voices] after the shooting is over."
Theatre has its pros and cons too, he adds. The need for detailed accuracy is not quite that intense on stage because its conventions accept heightened styles."Actors are not really speaking naturally--in their own voices--to begin with. Still, there's more time for rehearsals and actors have the chance to fine-tune their work at each performance. But I continue to feel--and so do the actors I've talked with--that the dialect work required for film is especially demanding."
SUB: Tapes and Mimicry
So how do you go about teaching a dialect or accent? What are the challenges? What are the approaches? (A dialect is a regional or ethnic form of spoken language, oftentimes with its own words and syntax; an accent has more to do with regional, ethnic, or national pronunciations, such as a New Yorkese accent).
The experts we talked with all use tapes. "With 'Titanic' the director [Richard Jones] had a special sound in mind for each character and a particular actor he wanted each performer to study," says Hecht, who brought in more than 20 tapes representing dialects and accents from Austria, Ireland, Britain, and the U.S.--both Eastern and Midwestern.
Other times, dialect coaches will bring in tapes of real people, not actors. Monich prefers that tack. And his research is highly specific. No generic dialects for him. Class, education, and ethnicity play a role.
"In 'Cabaret,' one of the characters is Jewish, another studied English in Britain and then studied English with an American. So during the course of the play his accent changes slightly--not that most audiences would notice that. They are more in tune with the foreignisms than class or educational subtleties."
Monich brought in tapes of contemporary Berliners, acknowledging that there are generational differences in the speech--cadence, rhythms, overall style. "The younger Germans are much more like Americans in their tone than, say, the Germans were during those pre-war years."
Both Monich and Smith rehearse with the actors individually, rather than doing scene work with several actors simultaneously. The coaches sit in on rehearsals, take notes, use the text when they work with actors, and may tape the actors--Smith likes that approach--so they can hear themselves and gauge their own authenticity.
Hecht, on the other hand, is not adverse to rehearsing actors in scenes, "especially if the characters are in the same family and are likely to sound very much alike." She adds that this--making sure family members do sound similar--is one of the subtle challenges she faced in coaching actors in productions like "Pride's Crossing" and "The Last Night of Ballyhoo."
SUB: Other Subtleties
The three coaches emphasize the interrelatedness of voice, speech, and body language. "If a character is an upper-class Southerner, his body movements are more contained than that of his northern counterpart," notes Hecht. "The upper-class Southerner does not chew gum in public and doesn't swing his arms. Obviously that reality affects the way the voice is released, the volume, and the inflections."
Elizabeth Smith, whose speciality is United Kingdom dialects, talks about the impact of climate--in addition to economic realities--on speech. "In Maine, because it's cold, people don't move their lips too much when they speak. In Liverpool--perhaps because it's a factory culture--residents take air in through the nose and their speech is nasal." Smith contends that capturing cadence and rhythms are the most important elements. "Speech from urban centers is usually faster and more staccato than speech from rural areas. New York and Cockney rhythms are similar. In western England, the cadences are slower. The physical and vocal are integrated."
Deborah Hecht agrees, adding, "Generally there's more nuance in southern speech than elsewhere--that's a holdover from the British influence. Fewer words are hit for emphasis. The British usually don't have too hard a time doing southern speech because of those similarities."
Certain plays and authors embody their own sound. Tim Monich says the major challenge in working on Bernard Shaw's "You Never Can Tell," as a case in point, was not the British speech per se, but rather the phrasing, emphasis, and musicality of the text itself.
SUB: Flexibility
Musicals may pose a host of issues if the production's spoken language is in a dialect or accent. What happens to that dialect, for example, in song? While Monich suggests that the music frequently helps shape the correct speech, Hecht and Smith believe the dialect can go right out the window, unless the actor is reminded of his dialect and/or accent in song.
And just how much dialect appears in the song may depend on the biases of the musical directors, many of whom may want that belting Broadway style, regardless of where the play is set geographically or culturally.
"With both 'Tommy,' and 'Me and My Girl,' the singing was deliberately American in style, unlike the spoken British dialogue," says Smith, who adds that some conventions in theatre allow--require--a degree of inauthenticity.
"We always have to take into account that an American audience may simply not follow certain British, Scottish, or Irish dialects if they're too truthful," Smith explains. "Oftentimes we're just suggesting the dialect or accent with a few well-chosen vowel sounds." Still, there are going to be differences between her "generic" Cockney, Welsh, or Estuary Standard--London speech spoken by Brits under 50.
Hecht recalls the challenges of working on the Thai sound in "The King and I." "The Thai language does not lend itself to Western spoken theatre. In fact, the final words in a Thai sentence are oftentimes very soft or dropped altogether. On stage, we had to suggest that soft style, but at the same time the sentences had to be completed and make sense."
Smith says the most difficult project she ever worked on was Caryl Churchill's "Striker" where 11 British dialects had to be taught and mastered. Hecht finds Irish dialects difficult to teach, "mostly because American actors have a mistaken notion about Irish speech that comes from commercials like Irish Spring soap."
On the other hand, Monich feels there are no particularly difficult dialects, short of those that are completely unfamiliar. "Until fairly recently, American actors were not familiar with Afrikaner speech. When I first coached a cast doing a Fugard play, the actors were all doing a West Indian accent. Today, that's no longer a problem."
SUB: A Good Ear
Most professional actors do not have too much trouble with dialects or accents, we were told. A good ear, spontaneity, and a willingness to do something untried are big pluses.
"Unexpectedly," says Hecht, "I find classically trained singers the most difficult to teach dialects. That's because many of them are rigid in their approaches. They are trained to place their voices in a certain way and it's hard for them to depart from their training. Dancers, however, are surprisingly good at grasping dialects."