As an ex-professional actor, i have to qualify deb's comment: a) mel gibson
may be professional, but he is not an actor :) b) any stage actor worth his
salt can learn almost any accent, but it may be more hassle than its worth as no
one knows exactly how they spoke and consistency among actors will be hard
with no standard to work from. Certainly, I would recommend using classically
trained stage actors -- it will be easiest for them to get rid of the
colloquialisms of today and go to a neutral place for a period piece.
Also, as a Philadelphian and someone who knew some of the historic Philly
people, the whole Historic Philadelphia situation is really a shame. They pay
enough for good actors to work for them (its a great day job for actors and
summer job for acting students), but they don't recruit the good actors, and the
good ones that do work for them usually end up in the singing groups or the
specifically "acting" troupes, not the living history stuff.
don't let them ruin your trip to philly! come visit me at the Atwater Kent,
where I begin my internship on monday :) <A HREF="www.philadelphiahistory.org">www.philadelphiahistory.org</A>
beth


[log in to unmask] writes:

> Accents: don't. Even most professional actors can't do them well.
>
> As for speech patterns, read diaries, journals, plays and popular literature
> of
> the time period to get an idea of how people spoke. If you can find examples
> from the same geographical area you are in, that is even better. Wearing the
> period clothing helps too. If you wear it long enough, you'll find that it
> will
> change the way you move which will help your "character". Period dances of
> the
> time are good for teaching that as well.
>
> It's my experience that speech patterns and mannerisms are much more
> effective
> for conveying a character than accent. You should be able to tell that
> someone
> is "different" without them having to utter a word. Thus, it is better to
> forget about the accent (because until phonographs, we really don't know
> what
> people sounded like anyway). And again, very few people can really master
> accents and thus instead of adding to a character, they usually become
> distractions.
>
> A funny side story, a British friend and I were walking through the historic
> part of Philadelphia and cringing at the bad "English" accents being used by
> the living history people. He said to me, "You're accent is probably more
> correct than mine for this time period." The fact that the women had
> draw-string mob caps didn't help much either. Tisk tisk Philly, you guys
> should
> know better.
>
> Deb
>


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