“I was born right here.” – Juror #7
The play takes place in New York City, and so, a few jurors were bound to have some form of accent to play with. Luckily for me, getting to play with a New York accent was a familiar experience.
I was ecstatic when I learned I would have a New York accent as Juror #7! I grew up in Holbrook New York, on Long Island, until I was 13 years old, and my parents are from The Bronx and Queens! New York City is a part of me in many ways, and I was anxious, yet excited, to see how well my accent would translate to my family members who were coming to see the show. We were introduced to several resources early on by Marc, who was our accent coach throughout the process. The most important of these documents is a set of worksheets with corresponding audio tracks–made for a listen-and-repeat learning style.
I had a much-needed one-on-one meeting with Marc to see how my accent was developing and what areas needed attention. I was very nervous about this meeting, though I cannot say exactly why. After warming up my facial posture, suddenly, we discovered that my New York accent was not appearing from thin air. My accent emerged as a culmination of the lexical phrasing I grew up listening to and from Marc’s accent materials. At this point in the process I had to consider one important question: was my natural-born New York inflection going to be a tool or a hindrance in developing Juror #7’s accent?
Identifying the positions of my oral cavity necessary to create the New York dialect felt natural to me. These positions include pursed/forward lips, forward tongue root, and increased contact between the tip of my tongue and the backs of my upper teeth. Marc suggested imagining a lightbulb in my mouth or creating a ‘trumpeted’ shape to achieve the right starting position. He also supplied me with additional materials describing the most important lexical sets to review and polish up.
Every now and again, the accent would get lost in rehearsals where my focus was spread between blocking, lines, perspective, costumes, smoking, and everything in between. So, I turned to the Voice Acting Club blog online to explore some folks’ favorite vocal warm-ups and tongue twisters for different accents. My favorite was this one:
“Betty bought a bit of butter. But she said "This butter's bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter." So she bought some better butter and made the bitter batter better."
"Moses supposed his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously. If Moses supposes his toeses aren't roses, then what are his toeses supposes to be?”From here, everything began to fall into place. I was so happy to have such a productive meeting with Marc, and to eventually come to the mutual conclusion that if Juror #7 had a little Long Island in her, that would be just fine! Juror #7 being born in New York does not specify any one part of the city/island, so it is justifiable that she could have been born somewhere on the Island itself or in any of the Boroughs. Marc encouraged me to have conversations with my family members from and still in New York and to see if I could study how their mouths moved to make certain sounds on unique words. After that, the New York accent became a part of Juror #7 that I didn’t want or need to let go of sometimes.
Having moved here from New York when I was in 8th grade, I learned quickly that middle schoolers were ruthless, and they didn’t like the way I talked. My sisters, mother, and I all found ourselves trying to hide or destroy our accents to fit in with our new friends. I will regret those early years in Virginia for the rest of my life because I have come to learn that the New York accent that slips out now and then is such a priceless part of me and my history. A history that even helped me all these years later in crafting a personal connection to my character.