Director: Anna D. Shapiro
Cast: Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Position: Dialect Coach to Australian Understudies

Getting to Dialect Coach the Australian understudies for Steppenwolf's Sydney season of August: Osage County in 2010 was a wonderful experience. From the moment I was given the script and a copy of Steppenwolf's Tony Award-winning Broadway production on DVD, I was besotted with this incredible play and its extraordinary cast. 
The play is set in Oklahoma, USA at the three storey, slightly dishevelled home of the Weston family. We meet patriarch and celebrated former poet Beverley Weston in the first scene as he interviews Johnna, a young Native American woman, for their housekeeping job. "Life is long ~ T.S. Eliot" he quotes and chats with her about life, writers, the job and his pill-popping wife Violet. And by the next scene, he's gone. Disappeared. Drowned. Was it an accident or suicide? Violet is distraught - a mix of grieving wife, little girl lost, needy she-wolf and a twister set on causing chaos to everything in her path. Pity the 3 daughters and their partners who arrive to help her! "I'll eat you alive!" she howls at them.
Our 6 Australian understudies covered 13 roles in the show. Legendary actress Judi Farr understudied Tony Award winning Deanna Dunagan as the slurring, drug addicted matriarch Violet. Judi performed the role at a few matinees and a couple of evenings, and I was thrilled to come across a blog comment online from an audience member who'd seen her. He wrote: "... down the stairs shuffled Judi Farr. Under the influence of speech altering drugs it was initially difficult to hear how she was managing a regional American accent. Her next entrance not only confirmed that she had nailed the accent BUT that she had completely pulled on the skin and inhabited the body of the best written female character in the modern American theatre canon."  Way to go Judi! Made me proud.

Copyright 2011 Jennifer White. All rights reserved.

Director: Mark Kilmurry
Cast: Glenn Hazeldine and Daniel Mitchell
Position: Dialect Coach and Yiddish Language Coach

Tuesdays with Morrie is a play that I just loved working on, not only for the company I got to share the experience with but the inspiring and deeply moving story.
Mitch Albom (played by Glenn Hazeldine) is a hot-shot sports reporter who doesn't know how to slow down or stop to see the gifts of life. One night while flicking TV channels he catches a glimpse of Nightline and sees his old college professor - "my favourite professor" - Morrie Schwartz (played by Daniel Mitchell) being interviewed. Morrie has ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease (also known as Motor Neurone Disease) and is dying. At college Mitch promised he'd stay in touch but he didn't - life got in the way. So he grabs a flight and a rental car and visits Morrie - originally as a one-off trip squeezed into his busy schedule but soon realises he still has many lessons to learn from his old friend and in return he can help Morrie as his illness progresses. They meet weekly on a Tuesday, the day they used to meet up for a chat in college - "We're Tuesday people". They share life lessons, laughs, tears and their humanity ... until the end.
Glenn and Danny are two of the loveliest, most consumate craftsmen and it was beautiful to work with them on both seasons - our original production at the Ensemle in 2009 and the Australian tour in 2011. Their love of acting, language and perfecting their dialects makes my job a joy. Danny had to speak some Yiddish in the show so in 2009 I went to the Sydney Jewish Museum to meet and interview one of their guides, Alex, an elderly gent of Polish/Jewish background. He recorded the Yiddish lines for me and I translated his pronunciation into phonetics so I could teach those exact sounds, melodies and rhythms to Danny. He picked them up brillantly and I was really proud. It can be difficult speaking in a foreign dialect in a play, let alone having to master another language.
A composer and musical director I knew, James Easton, died of Motor Neurone Disease. He cast me as the Russian gypsy Natalia in his musical of Jack The Ripper and it was an honour to be a part of his last show. Coaching Tuesdays with Morrie reminded me of his battle and how precious life is. As Morrie says "You have to go after life and embrace it". And some of his Yiddish? "Farhaltnicht dein licht unter a shorten" ... "Don't hide your light under a bushel".

Copyright 2011 Jennifer White. All rights reserved.

Director: Mark Kilmurry
Cast: Jamie Oxenbould and Sharon Millerchip
Position: Dialect Coach

In December 2010, I ended a fun year of coaching at the Ensemble Theatre with their production of Last of the Red Hot Lovers by Neil Simon. Directed by Mark Kilmurry, who I've had the joy of working with several times, it starred the brilliant talents of Jamie Oxenbould and Sharon Millerchip. Set in the 1970s, Jamie played Barney Cashman, a New York fish restaurant owner, who is desperate to shake up his dull life by having an affair. He tries, unsuccessfully, to seduce 3 separate women, all played by the lovely and hysterical Sharon Millerchip.
Jamie and Sharon both have great ears for accents so it was a treat to take their talents to an even higher standard than they already are. Jamie nailed Barney's New York dialect and Sharon was outstanding at mastering the 3 different accents and voices we worked on for her characters - Elaine's ballsy New York, Bobbi Michelle's ditsy Californian, and Jeanette's depressed Standard American. With a great writer, director and actors on hand, I had a ball! 
Here's a clip taken from the final dress rehearsal where you get to hear Jamie and Sharon's accents in action. Enjoy!

Copyright 2011 Jennifer White. All rights reserved.