Director's Note: Tone the Accent Down

Unless you are channeling your grandma, in which case, turn it up

Is putting on an accent like putting on a costume?

More like a wig. Maybe makeup. Neck-up choices have an out-sized impact on a performer’s ability to communicate. They are also the most sensitive choices that provoke strong reactions from the audience.

Accents, or dialects, are a similarly tricky dance that everyone has an opinion about…including me! After enjoying high school musical #24 last weekend, I realized that a production’s approach to the dialect of the show has the biggest effect on the success of a show.

I recently listened to a stage manager explain how they felt about the choices an opera company made for a production of Turandot. The stage manager was the only Chinese or Chinese American person on the whole production which was, as usual, set in China. They were worried that the production would do “bronze face”; and happily surprised when it was not even mentioned. They noticed that most performers put on eye makeup in a slightly different shape than they usually do. …