Georgia Girl

It was announced today the USC School of Theatre in Los Angeles has a new name. It will now be called the USC School of Dramatic Arts.

glassharmonica

Another school skirts the "-er"/"-re" controversy!

EmmyBet

I just found out that in Wisconsin, the words are pronounced "dram-a" (as in "ham" ), and "thee-yay-ter." Yet more controversial fodder!

TheRealKEVP

If you pronounce the words that way, you will be considered a "hick" by the theatre community. My mother is from Wisconsin, and as a graduate student studied theatre at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and she certainly did NOT say "Dramma" or "thee-AY-tur". I doubt very much that you would find anyone on the University of Wisconsin's theatre faculty that pronounces the words that way.

KEVP

EmmyBet

Oh - absolutely those are the hick pronunciations. I just was surprised that anyone really did still say it that way. Not in the real theatre world, of course!

glassharmonica

That's why they have those Accent Reduction classes.

EmmyBet

I must say that in my D's voice/speech classes it's the NY/NJ kids that need to work on their accents, not her! She can do a wicked version of the broad WI vowels, but she really has no accent of her own to reduce. She also now can do a terrific rendition of the various tri-state dialects.

Last year she was in a play where everyone was from Mississippi (Crimes of the Heart). She was the only one who got the accent right away. Well, duh, her grandmother is from Mississippi - she's been hearing it all her life.

TheRealKEVP

EmmyBet, if your daughter had studied theatre in England, the country that invented the language, I would bet she would have had to get rid of her "accent".

KEVP

EmmyBet

Oh, absolutely! It's all relative. They start next year with "accent reduction" and move into accent building in the third year. Most juniors - including my D - will do British accent development at LAMDA during their study abroad. She knows it will be difficult to learn accents well, but fortunately has a great ear and loves this kind of thing.

I know lots of people here with deeply entrenched Midwest accents. I grew up in MA (and do not have a Boston accent) so my kids are pretty middle-of-the-road. I do feel for the NY/NJ kids who find it almost impossible to drop their unique vowels and consonants, but of course it is extremely important.

I do find it fascinating how Americans approach British theatre, particularly Shakespeare. Personally, I prefer that they use an "elegant" American accent than get bogged down in trying to sound too British. Mostly that is because you rarely find an entire cast where the British accent is consistent, and sometimes it can be distracting when they seem to be working harder on their accent than their acting.

BvilleLady

I so agree with how distracting an affected British accent can be coming out of an American actor. Specific dialects take time and effort to learn properly. My son was recently in a workshop production of THE SECRET GARDEN at his college and the working class characters had to speak in Yorkshire dialect. I was quite impressed with how well they incorporated the dialect into their performance. On the other hand, the upper class characters all more or less spoke with what you might refer to as an elegant British inflected accent. Their tone was more uniform. They were all very good in their roles and had such wonderful singing voices. It would have been extremely distracting if they were also trying to sound like Kate and William too!

By the way, we are from NJ and I can assure you we have absolutely no accent at all, lol!

glassharmonica

I'm impressed at all of you who managed to escape a regional accent, especially those of you from nearby (to us) NJ. I am never conscious of my own accent... until I hear a recording of my voice, in which case I find myself wanting to crawl under furniture. It's not the local accent, but it is definitely (to my year) an East coast mid-Atlantic sound. My daughter has been working on speech and voice for a few years but, although she doesn't have our truly cringeworthy local accent, I hear East coast, mid-Atlantic in her voice, and I know she will need to continue working on it. If she doesn't get enough instruction in her auditioned BA program, she will work on it privately.

wisdomsomehow

Oh, I think USC is solidly in the theatre camp (as opposed to theater). Changing our name to SDA was intended to show that we don't just focus on theatre, we also focus on acting for film & tv.

I can't think of any students that are pleased with the name change. Everyone is indifferent or annoyed by it. Personally, I'm just going to ignore it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm in the School of Theatre.

ModernMan

This is coming from just a hunch but I have a feeling that the John Wanye Foundation may name the school.