I recently listened to a very distinguished director being interviewed about his work. He expressed a clear preference for working with “non actors”. This got me thinking….
Training actors - and training people who go on to train actors - has taken up a significant part of my working life. Of course, in some ways you can’t really teach someone to act. If you don’t have any imagination or ability to communicate with other human beings, you’ll never be much cop as an actor - or anything else really. That’s the basic requirement. It’s a bit like saying you need to able to count to be an accountant - or a mathematician. HOWEVER - the actual JOB of being an accountant or a mathematician requires a great deal of knowledge and skill beyond the basic ability to count!
It’s the same for actors. Being able to deliver a performance night after night in a theatre - or take after take on film - requires actual skills that need to be honed over a period of time. Remembering cues, being in the right place at the right time - being heard by the audience - being present your fellow actors - none of this is simple. These are skills that actors acquire during their training.
Among the skills that most forms of drama training seek to develop are skills connected to voice and speech. In recent years, drama training has become a lot more relaxed around the whole issue of accent and this is a good thing! Nobody’s accent should be demonised or judged to be inferior. The idea that actors should have to speak R.P. (whatever that is) all the time, or that Standard Souther British English is in any way “better” is clearly ridiculous. An authentic Essex, Manchester or Liverpool accent (for example) can be a real asset for an actor. However, the idea that an actor should be able to change their accent to portray a different character is surely still valid?
One recent accent development that has become increasingly prevalent is what’s known as “th” fronting. Effectively, this means “th” is replaced with “f”, or “v”. A while back, I heard on the accent grapevine that a course in a highly respected drama school had decided to abandon the teaching of dental fricatives (“th” sounds) and let students use “f” (thing) or “v” (“this and that”) instead.
Now, I know a lot of foreign speakers who don’t have dental fricatives in their own language struggle with this sound - and that’s understandable. It’s a bit of a faff to put your tongue between your teeth (or on your top teeth) and squeeze the air out between them to make this sound. If you’re not used to doing it on a daily basis, it can feel clumsy and frankly weird. Unfortunately, if you want to speak English with clarity - i.e if you want to be able to distinguish between “thought” and “fought”, “third” and “furred”, “enthuse” and “infuse” - you have to bite the bullet (and hopefully not your tongue!).
I found this abandonment of a perfectly useful and infinitely achievable consonant depressing. It’s not just the loss of minimal pairs (third/furred, thought/fought, enthuse/infuse) that bothers me. It short changes student actors and perpetuates a popular misconception that leads to the spurious elevation of “non actors” above those who have taken the time to learn their craft and develop real, useful skills.
In a recent TV talent contest aimed at finding an untrained actor with “raw talent”, one contestant said they wanted to be an actor because they thought it was a job that would enable them to express themselves. I thought this was an interesting approach - that for me, fundamentally missed the point of being an actor. But then again - if you’ve had no training and you have no craft, what choice do you have but to express yourself?
Raw talent is great. Raw talent that is nurtured, trained and given actual skills is better. After all, who wants a surgeon, an engineer or a high court judge that has “raw talent” - and nothing else?
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