Who knew that speaking the English language could be such a challenge?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best impersonator in the world… far from it in fact. Sometimes I try to mimick a voice or a character, and my friends will laugh at me because they can’t figure out what voice I’m trying to do. I can do a mean Cleveland from Family Guy… and a sub-par Gilbert Gottfried… but with the exception of those two, I’m kind of at a loss when it comes to voices.

Well, with the help of the dialect coaches here at the Festival, I’m beginning to make a little bit of headway in my accent work.

There are three wonderful ladies who have helped me learn how to speak in different accents: Sarah Shippobotham, Edda Sharpe and Laurann Brown. They each have slightly different approaches to the work, but all work towards the same end result.

Before arriving at the Shaw, I had done a little bit of work on accents back in theatre school, but it had certainly been a few years, so I felt pretty rusty. I’ve dabbled a bit with a few different accents here… RP (a standard British dialect), Cockney (for my understudy in Play, Orchestra, Play) and German (for my understudy in Sunday in the Park).

What I’m finding most interesting in the process is figuring out how the sound is created… It’s easy to think that to do a different voice, you just try to imitate what you hear. Sure, that’s a part of it, but the deeper understanding of where the sound is produced and why it sounds a certain way is how I’ve found success in manipulating my voice.

Placing the voice up at the front of your mouth towards the tip of your teeth with a round mouth produces a very different sound than if you place it at the back of your throat with a wide mouth.

Over the weeks, I’ve slowly become comfortable with how the sound is produced, so the next layer for me to add in is the cadence of the dialects. Each accent has a different “tune” to it… Our Canadian accent can tend to sound flat, the English accent can sound sing-songy, and the German accent can sound punchy. Figuring out how to listen to the musicality of the speech is my next challenge.

Little by little, my accents are becoming more and more believable. Baby steps…

I tell you, I can relate to how Eliza Doolittle must’ve felt when she first encountered ‘Enry ‘Iggins.

~Kelly Wong