Voice II: Dialects and the International Phonetic Alphabet (I.P.A.)

One of the most exciting ways an actor can portray a character is by making vocal choices and through use of language - speaking a character's dialect can be crucial to that. Like a costume, dialect helps tell the story of the character and create an authentic fictional world for the audience. In this course, we will explore how to learn, rehearse, and perform dialects using a method that is effective, respectful, and fun. Learning a dialect involves investigating cultural context, vowel and consonant shifts, inflection, rhythm, vocabulary, word pronunciation, and oral posture (where in the mouth the sounds are made and how the mouth shapes sound). In this class, there will be a focus on listening with awareness, sound analysis, and experientially playing with specific dialects. Dialect biases, conscious and unconscious, will be examined. Context, specificity, and intent will be explored so that stereotyping through dialect can be understood and avoided. Together the class will learn and practice two dialects, using some of the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet and Wells' Lexical Set. Resources for finding dialects (books, links, apps, coaches, personal interviews) will be identified. The class will culminate with students researching a specific dialect, learning it well enough both to speak it with a text and teach it to others. In the process, we will identify features of our own individual dialects, known as idiolects. Enrollment preference will be given to TAPS majors and minors. There are no prerequisites to take this class, although it will be useful to have taken Voice for the Actor in advance.