On accents

[learnedax]

The other day I was musing on acting accents, spurred partly by a discussion in james_nicoll's journal about how practically no one gets them right, and partly by a background train of thought on playing Elizabethan theatre. Someone asked me a while back whether I did an English accent for Shakespeare; I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess for upper class characters, at least, I do a mostly region-neutral aristocratic tone. I mused on trying to make my pronunciation at least a bit more British, but as before mentioned accents are very tricky. House, M.D. is passable, and Amy Walker seems pretty convincing to me, but this is a singular talent, I would say, which is not possible, and perhaps not desirable, for the majority of actors to use. Because an accent can also be distracting, and an even slightly imperfect accent doubly so. Some roles, like Captain Fluellen, clearly demand an accent, but that's part of the character, written in to be an accent, and so not a distraction laid on top of it.

Still, there is some thinking out there that Shakespeare is more properly played with an English accent, and so I mused on whether I was doing my parts a disservice by not learning their proper tones. But then, while looking at opinions expressed on various internet fora, I saw a point made that was terribly obvious, and completely changed my thinking: modern British English is as much evolved and changed from Elizabethan English as American English is. So until we can all learn to con a true Elizabethan speech, I do not think we should feel lessened for not speaking in a different incorrect dialect.

Comments

Two thoughts...

[new-man.livejournal.com]

Of course, you don't act alone -- unless you're acting alone. Being the only member of the cast with an accent or a particular accent -- even if it's the correct accent -- can be more distracting than the wrong accent or no accent for a part that "should" have one. Henry V is funny because it plays heavily with regional and national voices. No one thinks that Theseus ought to be played with a Greek accent (modern or ancient) or that Prospero ought to speak like an Italian. In fact, most of the time, we give Prospero an upper-class English accent... but I digress. Check in with your director; make sure everyone is willing and capable to do accent work before investing yourself in it heavily. In the Shakespeare on The Common production of Henry V I saw a few years back, Henry spoke with an accent; no one else did. It was irritating as hell and made him sound like a pretentious fop.

Second.... My impression (and I'm not an expert) is that the Elizabethan accent is somewhere between modern Australian and modern southern American. It's got a lot of twang and sounds about as much like a modern English accent as a modern American accent does.

O.K., a third thought -- accents are fripparies. They are, just that: accents. They're a nice bonus, but not the first thing an actor should be concentrating on. Learn your lines, your marks, your motivations. Learn your stage combat so no one gets hurt. Once you've got the essentials nailed down, you can -- well -- accent them.

Re: Two thoughts...

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

I think those are all good points. I wouldn't be working on an accent before the point of polishing a role, unless the accent were so integral to the nature of the role that it must come before other small details; Brad Pitt's role in Snatch could not have been done accent-free, and if I were rehearsing such a part I wouldn't want to leave the accent to the end.

Many of our players in Henry did put on one accent or another, both for the regional reasons you mention and in a couple of cases to stress class differences. However, I think you're right that even so Harry could come off as weirdly different from his countrymen. I was thinking as much on what one could do in an ideal world as on what one might drop in oneself without mentioning to anyone else.

Re: Two thoughts...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

"Many of our players in Henry did put on one accent or another, both for the regional reasons you mention and in a couple of cases to stress class differences."

Or, in some cases, to help emphasize different-ness of characters in a heavily-doubled-and-tripled production.

"Harry could come off as weirdly different from his countrymen."

Well, "weirdly" might be a problem -- but Harry *is* significantly different from his countrymen, and that's a big part of what the play is about. IMAO.