Accent and dialect coaching
An accent for a role, or a change to your own. Taught from the sounds up, so it holds when you stop thinking about it.
Two quite different jobs
Learning an accent for a role. You’ve been cast, or you’re auditioning, and the part needs an accent you don’t have. There’s a deadline and it has to be convincing.
Changing your own. Actors who want to broaden their casting range. People whose accent is being misheard at work. New arrivals in Australia who understand everything and are still asked to repeat themselves. Speakers who want to be understood on a call without effort on either side.
Both are the same underlying skill, worked from opposite directions.
How it’s taught
Most accent work fails because it’s learnt as impression. You copy the overall music of it, it sounds passable in the mirror, and it collapses the moment you’re concentrating on something else — like acting.
The alternative is to build it from the components.
- The sounds. Which vowels move, and where to. Which consonants change. Accents differ in a surprisingly small number of specific, learnable ways, and once you know which ones, the accent becomes a set of rules rather than a vibe.
- Placement and resonance. Where the sound sits in the mouth and throat. This is what makes an accent feel authentic rather than performed, and it’s the part impressions always miss.
- Rhythm and music. Stress patterns, pace, and where the pitch rises and falls. Often more identifiable than the vowels.
Then drilling, until it’s automatic. An accent you have to think about is an accent that will desert you in an audition. The goal is one you can forget about while you act.
Accents
Commonly requested: General American, Standard/Received British, Cockney and Estuary, Irish, Scottish, New Zealand, and various Australian registers from broad to cultivated.
Phoebe is a New Zealander who trained in New Zealand and works in Australia — the two accents everyone assumes are interchangeable and which are, to anyone from either country, obviously not. If you need one of them and you’re from the other, that’s a specialty.
For anything not listed, ask. Most accents can be prepared with enough notice.
Softening your own accent
Worth being clear about what this is and isn’t.
It is not about losing your accent, and it certainly isn’t about your accent being wrong. It’s about adding control — being able to move towards a more neutral register when a situation calls for it, and back again. That’s a professional skill, like being able to write formally as well as casually.
Actors gain casting range. Professionals in client-facing roles stop repeating themselves. And nobody is asked to give anything up.
Prices
| Session | Price |
|---|---|
| Trial (30 min) | $20 |
| 30 minutes | $35 |
| 45 minutes | $55 |
| 60 minutes | $75 |
Accent work benefits from regular short sessions more than occasional long ones — the drilling is what makes it stick. Weekly 30 or 45-minute sessions over a few weeks generally beats two intensive hours.