First off, some brief lessons from sociolinguistics…
Everyone has an accent. To say that someone’s speech lacks accent features is akin to saying that person lacks facial features.
When someone is said to have “no accent” (or “just a hint of an accent”), it is likely they speak with an accent that reflects dominant identities and links them to privileged social locations. The story inferred by a listener who does not perceive an accent is that there is nothing ‘other’ about the speaker–that they are, somehow, essentially ‘neutral’ or ‘unmarked’ in their identities. We must ask the question: In our society, who has the privilege of being perceived as the prototypical human being? How does one come to be ‘unmarked’?
The idea of a linguistic ‘neutral’ is inextricably and problematically tied to ideas of hierarchy and supremacy. For this reason, it is important that we speak with specificity when referring to a person’s accent. If the accent features we’re perceiving as ‘neutral’ are predominantly associated with white, educated, middle class, suburban, cis/heteronormative North Americans, we ought to say so. Those are not neutral identities. They are specific.
The speech choices that we make–consciously or unconsciously–are the way we “clothe” ourselves linguistically, onstage and off. They reveal culture and style, time and place, character and identity. They are signifiers that help us to belong and show our belonging, to differentiate and individuate ourselves, to stand out or to blend in, to locate ourselves in relationship to the people around us, our cultures, and our society.
Simply put, a person’s accent always tells a story.
This layer of storytelling may be difficult to describe without a background in linguistics, but it is not difficult to perceive. Our listeners hear us in specific ways and make meaning based on what they hear. So do our audiences. When we see someone on the street, we might imagine how they sound, and often we are at least partially right. Similarly, when we hear someone’s voice, we make all kinds of connections and assumptions about the rest of their identity–some right, some wrong, but all part of a story being created between speaker and listener. And those stories are amplified in the context of performance.
Stanislavski said that “in general is the enemy of art”. When we settle for the idea of “no accents” in a production, we are settling for a generalized concept of character. This maps conveniently onto another non-specific production practice: color-blind casting. Whitewashing and erasure are particularly insidious when it comes to language. As we move toward more identity-conscious practices, part of that evolution can include more sophisticated sociolinguistic awareness. People’s accents matter.
By the same token, when we make a conscious choice to use the actors’ own accents in production rather than a specific dialect design, that supports the story that the characters and the actors are, on the level of language, the same people, or at least have considerable overlap in their identities, circumstances, time and place. That is a wonderful choice for some productions…but it’s the wrong choice for every production. Characters’ accents matter, too.
To extend the metaphor of linguistic “clothing”, to rely on the actors’ own accents in production is akin to having the actors costume themselves using their own clothing. It is a very specific, metatheatrical choice that will have a specific effect on the audience’s experience.
Another option is to engage with the linguistic world of the play through an intentional dialect design that takes actor identities into account. Historically, the dialect designer has nearly always been brought into a process too late and thus forced into a triage “support” role rather than a creative/collaborative one. Unfortunately, when the dialect work isn’t well resourced, the accents can end up sounding clunky, campy, or unnatural, the acting can suffer, and dialect work may be prioritized even less on the next project in terms of notice, credit, compensation, and rehearsal time. This system is self-replicating and unfortunately reinforces the harmful idea that accents are just “funny voices”.
There is a better way. Inviting the dialect designer into the creative process early on ensures specificity, respect, and support for the actors. Acting in an accent other than one’s own is an advanced skill that takes coaching and practice, but when it is done well it transports the audience into the world of the play like nothing else. All it takes is planning, but here is where the costume analogy falls apart. An actor can’t just put on an accent like they put on a costume. A dialect coach will need time for creative research and design prep, just like any other designer, but their preparation should ideally be finished well in advance of the first rehearsal. This allows the actors time with audio samples and practice materials, integrating the accent beforehand so that rehearsals can be spent on acting. The linguistic “costume build” is being done by the actors themselves, and asking them to do that entirely during staging rehearsals–even with the support of a great coach–shortchanges the quality of the product. My recommendation is that directors request dialect design services at least six weeks in advance of rehearsals. This allows the designer time to prepare actor-facing materials, and it allows the actors several weeks to become fluent in their new accents prior to rehearsals.