I’m starting the research for my role as dialect coach in a large, new musical. I’m not allowed to post about the details yet, so will speak in general terms about my process as I get ready to meet with the cast.
The play is set in a specific place several decades ago, and the location is basically a character in the play. The goal is to evoke the characters, time, and place while being as authentic as possible.
At the same time, we may need to be a little more consistent than real speakers of the dialect because we don’t want to make the audience to think the actors are making mistakes. Real people might say a word one way one moment and another way the next (I sometimes say EEther and sometimes say EYEther, for example). But if actors switch things up like that, instead of looking authentic it might look like they don’t know what they are supposed to do. Art is interesting.
There are at least 25 characters in the play, of various geographic locations and socioeconomic levels, and different races. While race doesn’t always play a role, in this location it does.
Where to begin?
The first thing I look for are samples of native speakers of the major dialect. Because this is set in the past, it entailed lots of time on the internet looking for old recordings, or people recorded now who would have been the correct age when the play takes place.
As I listen over and over to samples that (I hope!) are relevant, I listen for 3 main areas. One is the specific speech sounds (i. e., is it ask or ahsk), one is placement (how the mouth is shaped, which affects voice quality), and intonation/lilt/rhythm/musicality.
Speech sounds
In terms of the speech sounds, the first thing I always look at is what they do with the R sounds. This sound varies the most across dialects. In this case, it’s very complicated! Then I go through every other sound of spoken English to see how it differs from a Neutral American dialect. There are 44, if you were wondering.
Placement
Placement refers to where it feels like the sound lives in the mouth. This comes from habitual use patterns of mouth muscles. Placement often comes organically from working with the speech sound changes. In this case, however, the placement was difficult for me to find. After about a week I finally found it, and the dialect is starting to sound right. I needed to lower a section in the middle of my tongue relative to how I usually carry my tongue.
I will share this experience with the actors, because finding the correct placement is vital for this particular dialect.
Intonation
The rhythm and inflection of this dialect is also tricky. Actors really need to listen to native speakers in order to feel this. How much pitch variety is there? How different are the stressed and unstressed words in a sentence? How dramatic is the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables in a word? How to they inflect a question vs. statement vs. demand?
Character
After I have a sense of the dialect, I group the characters into general categories for the dialect. In this case there are 2 main categories with several characters who are just their own specific thing. (I have to go through all of the above for each of them as well, of course).
This is likely to evolve as rehearsals begin. My goal is always to work with the instincts of each actor to the extent possible while remaining within the boundaries of the piece. In many instances, there are several ways to accurately portray someone, which gives us some flexibility.
Singing
Accents in speech are often different than in singing. So working to maintain the dialect while also honoring the required pitch and rhythm of a song provides its own challenges. In this case I haven’t yet heard the music, so I will address this when I hear what they are doing.
Materials
The first time I meet the actors I will give a short presentation about the dialects. I will give them a handout summarizing what I discuss, with a list of the key changes for each major group of characters for them to refer to as they move through rehearsals. I will also include links to audio recordings I think they might find useful.
Deciding on the level of detail to provide at this initial session is often complex. Some actors want to nerd out over the nuances of a dialect. Some are terrified and wish they didn’t have to do it. Some pick it up easily by listening. Some want to know what IPA phonetic symbols reflect the new sounds. Some want to discuss how it feels to talk this way. Some may already know it from their past experiences. It is definitely not a one-size-fits-all kind of work.
Coaching
The differences in actor approach mentioned above makes individual coaching sessions creative and varied. My job is not only to have a firm enough grasp on the material to demonstrate and teach it, but also to instantly ascertain the way this particular actor in front of me likes to work, and translate the information into that modality. I have to be flexible, intuitive, adaptive, and creative (if I say so myself!).
Over the course of rehearsals, my coaching and feedback will take the form one not only one-on-one sessions, but also attending rehearsals to see how they are applying the work and offering little tips and adjustments.
When they get to the point of running the whole show, I will give notes with specific details to be aware of. I typically email these. It took me a horrifyingly long time to learn it is often easier to make a voice recording for these notes than to write them out — spelling some of the details involved in subtle changes in vowels, for instance, can be awkward.
I feel I must be leaving out a lot of elements here — it’s funny when you know something well, how hard it can be to explain it! But this gives a pretty good feel for the basics of the job.
If you’re looking for some dialect coaching yourself, get in touch to set up a session!
