The magic of 3x through

Actors work hard at accents—sometimes a little too hard. If you find yourself using too much effort, or focusing more on how you sound than what you’re saying, this is a formula that can help. And if you’re ever told to “pull back a little” on an accent, this might be the trick.

Three Times Through
Do each line three times, each time with a different point of focus:

1. Accuracy
   Say the line slowly and surely, getting every sound absolutely right (“I. brought. a bottle. of. wine.”)

2. Fluidity
   Blurt out the line, connecting every word together. Be sure the line is spoken on an exhale, like you’re sighing through it (“Ibroughddaboddluhwine”). It should feel reckless and inebriated.

3. Boredom
   Bring a little boredom into the body and toss the line away. (“…i broughta bottlea wine…”)

The reason this seems to work is that it progressively increases your feeling of ease, without sacrificing accuracy. Step 1 satisfies the part of you that wants to be precise—you do it right, and you know you’ve got it down. Step 2 makes sure you’re breathing with the line (sometimes accents will sound/feel stilted because you’re holding your breath as you speak). Step 3 gives you permission to work with bare minimum effort, which makes us believe you’ve been speaking that way your whole life.

A word about boredom: it’s sort of a taboo word for actors, but giving yourself permission to play with boredom in the body is a great way to find ease. All of a sudden, you become more believable, because you’re using nothing extra.

Three times through, with progressive fluidity and ease. Try it and see for yourself!

In praise of open-mouthed acting

One of the most distinctive features of Miller Voice Method (mVm) is the emphasis on acting with the lips unsealed. Many of us have a fear of being a “mouth breather”—and for good reason. Mouth breathing is not optimal at rest, for a number of physiological reasons. But there are some cases when it can work for you. Here are a few reasons I advocate mouth-breathing on stage and film—and there are, of course, always exceptions.

1. It looks and feels more vulnerable
   Try filming yourself doing the same scene, once where you close your mouth at the end of every line, and once where you leave it open. You’ll see a marked difference right away. With the lips unsealed, there’s a sense that you can be more affected by whatever’s coming at you—even by your own thoughts. There’s also a sense that the energy of the line continues after you say it—you’re searching your partner for a response.

2. It activates your sympathetic nervous system
   Mouth breathing (gently) activates the flight-or-fight part of your autonomic nervous system. This energizes your body and mind and puts you in a more reactive state. It’s the nervous system equivalent of coming a little forward onto the balls of your feet.

3. It doesn’t telegraph “I’m done”
   Imagine two actors on stage engaged in a dialogue. Both close their mouths as soon as their lines are over. On a subconscious level, the audience starts to get ahead of the action. But if both actors leave their mouths slightly parted, the audience doesn’t know what’s coming next—and the actors stay in a perpetual state of being ready to speak. This keeps audience and actors in a state of higher anticipation.

I often show this clip of Paapa Essiedu’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech as a brilliant example of open-mouthed breathing—his lips never close. One student put it perfectly: “He’s not just talking how he feels, he’s breathing how he feels.” And that’s the best reason of all—when you breathe through your mouth, there’s a sense that the breath becomes a part of your spoken expression, just as much as the words.

Which type of accent learner are you?

As with any skill, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to learning accents. There are, however, three distinct learning modalities. While most of us use a mix of all three, you may have a preference for one in particular. Knowing your style can help you find the most effective inroad to accent work.

The three learning styles are:

1. Auditory

2. Visual

3. Kinesthetic

How do you know yours? We usually teach to our preference, so imagine you’re going to teach a toddler to tie their shoes. Do you tell them how to do it? (Auditory.) Show them yourself? (Visual.) Or take their hands and guide them through the motions? (Kinesthetic.)

Here are some tips for learning accents in each modality—remember, you’ll likely want to use a combo.

Auditory

• Find native speaker audio
  You can find it on dedicated dialect websites, such as IDEA, or by searching YouTube (you’ll sometimes get better results omitting the word “accent” and instead focusing on terms like “Russian lady” or “Brooklyn guy”). Try to find a speaker who is your sex, race, and roughly your age. Once you’ve found a clip you like, close your eyes, listen and murmur along. Let the speaker’s voice pass through your head—in through your ear, and out your own mouth.

• Have a native speaker friend (or a dialect coach) record your lines for you
  This won’t work for everyone, and you want to be sure you don’t get locked into a line reading, but it can be a helpful method if your learning style leans auditory—and if you’re on a tight deadline. It can be especially useful if the dialect has a lot of special pronunciations (how do Brits say “schedule” again?).

• Listen to native music
  The music of a culture sometimes resembles its language, in rhythm and timbre. Learning an Appalachian dialect? Throw on some bluegrass and practice your accent as you bop to the banjo.

Visual

• Use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
  Love it or hate it, the IPA is a powerful tool to make your accent work more specific, especially if you’re a visual learner. You don’t have to learn it all at once—get a good dialect guide (something like this or this), then pull up an interactive phonetic chart where you can click and hear the sounds. Little by little, you’ll get the hang of it.

• Use “faux-netics”
  I use what I call faux-netics all the time with visual learners who are IPA-averse. Just write the sounds as you hear them. For example, in Standard British, “I can’t get this basket to France” becomes “I cahnt get this bahsket to Frahnce.” It’s not nearly as accurate as IPA, but it may work for you in a pinch.

• Draw intonation patterns
  Put on native speaker audio and draw what you hear—does the intonation look jagged or smooth? Are there big jumps, or is it fairly flat?

• Watch a native speaker
  Head to YouTube and watch an interview with a native. What do you see them doing with their articulators? Do they move their jaw a lot? Are the lips a little retracted? This brings us to…

Kinesthetic

• Use oral posture
  A term coined by Knight-Thompson Speechwork, oral posture refers to the “home base” position your articulators use for any given accent. You’re looking primarily at the moveable articulators—the jaw, lips, tongue, and soft palate. Find a native speaker on YouTube and try to identify some specifics. Does the jaw hang low? Can you hear a lot of nasality (low soft palate)? Are the lips a little pursed? Then try these adjustments on yourself (sometimes even one small shift makes a big difference).

• Go 3x through
  Muscle memory definitely comes into play in dialect work. Try each line 3x through—once for accuracy, then for fluidity, and a third time for a feeling of ease.

• Remember the rest of your body
  Accents aren’t a neck-up experience. They affect your whole sense of self, including your posture, physical rhythm, sense of body weight, and how much space you take up. Speaking in the accent, move around, dance to native music. Your tongue is connected to your toes via your fasica! Can you feel your accent in your feet?