Paula Jack
Paula Jack first worked as a dialect coach at a time when most people, even professionals in theatre, film and music, had no idea what a dialect coach does. That has changed and many more people know that it is someone who helps an actor acquire the accent that the actor’s character and the Director need. Accent will be based on ethnicity and/or location, whereas dialect can have these components but, in addition, dialect words—sometimes amended word order—which are not heard other than in that particular dialect.
Actors’ abilities vary greatly and some have an excellent ‘ear’ whilst others, though willing, will struggle to reproduce a sound other than their own. An actor who knows what the sounds, cadences and rhythm should be, can feel frustrated when not immediately producing those desired. Learning anything takes time and a coach who is short of patience will not succed.
The audience will not understand fully an accent that is 100% authentic for the region or time: if a production is set in the 8th century, and features Visigoths, few people alive now would understand the speech of that time if reproduced authentically. The audience need to understand what is being said and they would find it unsettling to hear, for example, an accent from the 21st century. Workable, intelligible solutions must be found.
There is no “One Size Fits All” when it comes to actors when learning an accent. Actors come from every different kind of background, training, experience, age, gender and ethnicity. An actor might have learned an accent on a previous production and then be frustrated because they find the new accent harder to memorise and the sounds are elusive. This can happen when switching from a previously Germanic accent to a Romance language based accent—even when working with the same coach.
The Director will have a clear idea of the character’s background, social class, age and other influences and it is vital that the dialect coach has an early opportunity to ask the Director about these details and discover what the director needs from the actor in terms of accent.
Language acquisition and the acquisition of an accent run on very similar trajectories with inevitably some sudden breakthroughs and plateaux.
Some feel that a person’s accent will be an accurate reflection of all the influences (place of birth, education, partners, Parents, current location et al) as if an accent were a kind of spoken passport with official stamps for each.
Coaching opera singers can be challenging as these professional singers have been working hard most of their lives at making the sounds they know well. Having said that, it was rewarding and wonderful working on the production of Carmen Jones at the National Theatre.
The top Costume people and the best make up and hair people see their rôle as that of helping to build the character the actor will portray: actors have remarked that once they have the ‘right’ shoes for the character, the rest builds on that: the appropriate costume; hairstyle and make-up plus sounding right for period, age, character with an accent that suits.
Working with actors over the years has made Paula both fascinated and aware of the variations in memory between people. Now and then she has worked with stand-up comedians, who are the fortunate possessors of phenomenal memories.
Paula Jack has worked with many actors with worldwide reputations: Scarlett Johansen; Brad Pitt; Robert Downey Junior; Keira Knightley; Hugh Bonneville and so many others. Paula is particularly proud of her work on the first two series of Killing Eve, working with Jodie Comer on accents and languages.
Note: (Throughout), ‘Actor’ means an actor of any gender.
Footnote: how galling for Dick van Dyke to be remembered for his Cockney accent in the 1964 production of Mary Poppins. I feel for this actor who was doing his best despite having had only one session of coaching with—not an accent coach—but a member of the cast who was Irish!
For more information, please go to IMDB:
