Decentering Listening: Toward an Anti-Discriminatory Approach to Accent and Dialect Training for the Actor

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reports on the findings of practice-based research into the development of anti-discriminatory accents and dialects training for actors with diverse intersecting identities. The author reviews an earlier strand of research into speech training within a UK conservatory that identified a bias toward Received Pronunciation reinforced by colonized listening practices. This article explores the impact of those listening practices on accent and dialect training. The author responds to the challenges inherent in providing training that both develops high-level skills and meets industry needs, while aiming to center the experiences of somatically othered students. The author develops their previous decolonizing model into a decentering framework for an approach to training actors that draws on critical pedagogy and asks students to cross the border from the conservatory into the community. This approach to accent and dialect training builds on verbatim and documentary theatre-making techniques, resulting in a practice that values empathy, listening, embodied practice, and autonomy, and the approach allows actors to perform “multiple authenticities,” while offering the potential for political insurgency within the performing arts industries.