AA - AMERICAN ACCENT WORK

Prelude - It is first important to note that there are a LOT of American Accents... so,  i narrowed it down to...

The General American Accent

I take acting workshop classes outside of Brit and this term we were fortunate enough to be studying the general American accent. I'm somewhat knowledgeable on my americanismssss... but this really helped smoothen out some mistakes and inconsistencies i had going into the role of Fastow
. It only took some self observation, trained guidance and a childhood consisting of me watching too much American TV/pretending to be the characters in the mirror.

We worked first at the sounds of a general American accent, reading phrases that stress certain sounds to highlight them and see what needs improving. We started off in groups observing the sounds before putting them into the context of performance where we staged an improv of an office scene where we were all on our phones saying these phrases. Looking back i realise how uncomfortable i was with performing in an accent and a big block to this i think was confidence. Confidence to me isn't a thing you can learn once and fully take on board, i always give my all to the task at hand but it takes practise and a bit of time maybe to find true confidence in something.

In breaking down the sounds we looked at consonants and vowels separately. With consonants i assumed that there was little difference but in fact these are the staples of the accent. We learnt about light and dark L's (for example the Ls at the beginning and the end of "LittLe" sound different.) The first L is light and second is a dark L because in the second the sound resonation is in the back of the throat rather than the front as it is for light.

The vocal coach that visited Brit covered similar work to what i did on the American accent requiring openness in the mouth (hence, "flat back and wide") You notice that specifically your lips and tongue work a lot harder performing in an American accent for this reason, the mouth is trying to receive openness.

This is the sheet we worked off of for the first lesson

From a starting point i think i performed all of these phrases really well, i was told i needed to lengthen my vowels slightly but apart from that it was really strong giving me the confidence to push further and develop my ability to take on an accent.

When learning a new accent it's important to identify the differences between the said accent and your own so that you can then work towards changing that. This lead is to look closer at the identification of accents and understanding the sounds that make up a dialect, in an almost Chekhovian manner.

The English that i speak is non-rhotic meaning that i don't pronounce the r in words like baRk, car, fiRm etc. whereas in an American accent the R would be more prominent.

We then looked at sounds and words that together make a completely different sound. You can see how the rhotic or non rhotic nature of accents inform sounds. 

Our next focus was character within accent and how you can almost layer your regular voice work over an accent. We each found a duologue (i used an unholy partnership of course) and were asked to establish contrasting voices for each character (experimenting with resonators, pitch, pace and tone), we were then asked to record ourselves reading in for both of the characters switching between the two whilst maintaining the characters' identities. After doing this for a while and being given guidance by the tutor we looked at how Laban Efforts can inform character in voice almost using pitch, pace, tone and resonation as axis' for movement quality substitutes.

I decided to exaggerate the two characters making a distinct difference between the two, i made most of my notes in my old text but i remember the gist of it. 

Fastow was Flick - high pitched, quick, distracted, airy with frequent voice breaks and resonating in his head.

Skilling was the polar opposite: Press - Bassy, slow sustained and assured speech, gravely, stern and resonating in his chest.

This character work really tied together the newly learnt work on accents and allowed me to give Fastow a voice, i didn't necessarily go to the extremes i did in the workshops but i definitely had it in mind during scenes/speeches. I gave Fastow a much flick-y voice especially in the moment where he stumbles onto the trading floor to contrast the gruff nature of that world. Through these lessons i feel like voice became part of my character rather than being separate entities as i had treated them previously.

After this term i feel as though i could walk down a street and pass as "generally American" which i actually tried a number of times ordering food, going to shops etc. and i was never called out on that meaning there's a good chance that people were either being really nice or that they fell for it. Either way, if it's not a win for me it's a win for humanity an I'm okay with that.

It's when you look at an accent in detail you begin realise the intricacy there is to different dialects and the expanse of things there are to learn. I walked into this first class thinking that i could hold an American accent and walked out not quite sure what an American accent even is. There is almost always something new to and with the cocktail of culture that is today's society it's only going to get even more complex. I really found joy in the accent work and being able to experiment, finding my own voice in a sound from a place I've never even visited through a character I've never met anything like. I really found joy in this task of developing accent and i now feel way better equipped to take on new challenges. Maybe even a somewhat believable Saudi Leonato?

After our final class i performed my monologue to the dialect coach and she gave me following notes

more emphasis on light L's

say - more "eeh" on a sounds

what - more "uh" (wut) 

find - more emphasis on  "d" sounds 

 i took this and went back to my text, recording my voice and looking out for what she had to say