The
topic Variation in English includes a
discussion of dialects which is of significant interest to me as a writer and
especially because I write audio plays.
This week’s discussion mentioned the American Midwestern dialect as the
one most commonly found in broadcast news because it is an easily
understandable, accessible and clear dialect.
As a result many voice actors and communications students affect this
speech rather than cultivate any range for regional dialects.
A
challenge for me as a writer and director is to inject a sense of realism to
the story that has a very specific location and make sure the actors understand
where their characters are in the story and how they should sound. Because you cannot see these characters it is
even more important to dress them in the right dialect while providing lines
that reflect their patterns of speech. Adding
to this challenge is the fact that my performers live in several different
cities (with their own informal dialects) and a few of the characters are not
American. This is a fun challenge.
For
American and Canadian actors, “broadcast English” is too formal. I receive auditions from broadcasters that
are too clean and articulate to be convincingly informal. Actors provide better material, but they
often don’t understand the Northwestern Pennsylvania mix of Scots-Irish and Polish for natives of the
region. Fortunately, there are enough
transplant (Really “refugee”) characters to make Philadelphia, Chicago and most
southern voices applicable to rural Pennsylvania. The fact that the story is about refugees
makes it a little easier to cast talented people who may not necessarily get
the local accent. But I try to work
harder with the actor performing “native” characters to make sure they sound
roughly the same. I start by referring
actors to http://www.pittsburghese.com
and this video. The point is to overemphasize the differences
in how locals speak versus where the actor is from. Rural communities identify themselves by
their common voice. You find this in
many “fish out of water” films where the main character speaks a more generic
American dialect and the locals have a borderline comedic accent to demonstrate
to audiences that they are somehow alien or detached from the world as the
audience understands it.
Elements
of the Pittsburgh/Northwest PA accent are only as different as other accents
from generic American, which means there are fun turns of phrase and
inflections to use. “Guys! Go ahead and get some beer from the cooler and come
watch the game” becomes “Y’unz guyz go ‘head’n grabba coupl’a burrs from that
dere cool’r and cumun ova’ t’watch the game’n at.”
The
writing never tries to translate to the dialect. The direction attempts to bridge some basic
word choices in the script to some inflection that results in the line as read
above. In the script, I would write “Y’unz
guys go ahead’n grab a couple’a beers from dat dere cooler and come on over
t’watch the game’n that.” The middle
ground is intended to inspire the performer to reach for a specific accent. The
goal isn’t to create the extreme example of speech, but to keep the actor
mindful of the basic elements of that accent so that they are consistent with
the other actors and convey their background in the story.
One
of my favorite characters is named Group Captain Neil McInnes. I am not Scottish, nor do I have an insight
into the Scottish Standard English dialect beyond episodes of “Star Trek” and
Monty Python sketches. Using the basic
premise from the Northwestern PA accent, I decided to go to an extreme in the
hope of finding a more mindful and experienced actor to pull the lines together
in a realistic way. The actor I chose
was a Londoner by the name of Ayoub Khote.
Given the prevalence of Anglo-Indians in Britain, this was not a
surprise, but Ayoub brought a love of the Scottish voice to the part that may
not have been a perfect imitation, but embodied the spirit of the dialect with
a natural flare for the burrs and “whoops” of Scottish English that made it
effective for a largely American audience.
I
drew on Canadian actor James Doohan’s popular style for “Star Trek” for my
writing but asked that the Ayoub listen to more contemporary Americanized
voices as displayed here on “The Late Late Show
with Colin Ferguson” Here,
Scottish host Ferguson talks with Scottish actor James McAvoy and the natural
conversation reveals how actors may remain subconsciously mindful of their
American audience. The music of the
Scottish dialect is apparent here, which is something I wanted to capture for
the performance.
Two
of the characters I wrote are of Indian descent, which could have been a
generic caricature of the dialect, but each character needed to be
distinct. One character needed to be
seen as a refugee and the other needed to be seen as an authority. The difference between the two was conveyed
by the latter’s closer resemblance to British-American English and the former’s
heavier, more traditional dialect.
The
character of Shiva Vesta was designed as a 20-something medical doctor, a medic
who had to provide lengthy technical exposition. Using an American actress to affect a more
traditional Anglo-Indian dialect, I covered up any imperfections by suggesting
the character had spent time in America pursuing her post-graduate degree. This seemed to work fine as the
British-English was the dominant dialect used in the show. Indian inflections
were added whenever the character grew excited or upset, but there is never a
regional identifier in her language.
The
other character, Balamani, was played by actress Reena Sharma, who is also a
psychologist living in Mumbai. Reena
provided an education in the vast variety of languages and dialects in
India. We discussed the character’s
background as an engineering student recently employed in the United States
from a college in south-central India.
Reena pointed out that most Indians know English and Hindi as their
“official” languages. Hindi can present
in any number of accents depending on the origin of the speaker.
British-English is taught as a common link between Indian cultures and the
outside world. In addition to Hindi and
English, most Indians have a regional and familial language. I modeled the character’s voice on a
consultant I had been working with at the time who spoke Hindi and Telugu, a
regional language from south-central India.
I chose Telugu
for its distinct, pleasing musical quality that shines when the speaker is excited. This worked perfectly for the character’s
introduction:
FEET TRIP AND BODY FALL,
CLOSE ON MIC.
BARBARA (SHARP CRY OF PAIN. EFFORT TO GET UP.)
ZOMBIES APPROACH ON MIC.
BARBARA Monsters…(in Tulugu) Ńeh-nǔ
dee-ńi ē-ĺah an-'thüm 'kah-niv-'va-nu[1] [I will not allow it to end this way.]
REVOLVER
CLICKS ON EMPTY CHAMBERS.
BARBARA (in
Tulugu) 'In-kah Ńeh-nǔ 'āy-mē 'chay-ya-'le-nǔ[2] [There is nothing more I can do for you.] (Throwing grunt)
I enjoy working with language as a way
of creating characters. Voice helps
define a character, especially in audio drama, which makes this unit
particularly important to me.
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