Actors spend years learning to enunciate and project their voices, but Colin Firth and Atlanta actress Bethany Anne Lind both had to surrender their normally robust pipes and learn to stutter for leading roles. Firth’s King George VI in “The King’s Speech,” nominated for 12 Oscars, struggles to find his voice as Britain goes to war. While Lind’s character, Margo, stutters live on the Alliance Theatre’s Hertz stage, confronting an alcoholic father in “Carapace,” 2010’s Kendeda winner.
Both fictional characters are shining a spotlight on stuttering in a way many say will change how people think about this disability.
“Historically, stuttering has been a punch line,” said Atlanta speech and language pathologist Tim Mackesey, who chose his career because he stuttered severely for 25 years. “As a child, I saw ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and later ‘A Fish Called Wanda,’ where characters who stutter were tormented. We’re hoping ‘The King’s Speech’ does for stuttering what ‘Rain Man’ did for autism and ‘As Good As It Gets’ did for OCD.”
Mackesey was brought on board by the Alliance to help Lind develop a character with a realistic and authentic stutter. Something Firth essentially had to teach himself.
“There are books written that help people not to stutter, but there’s not a lot of information on how to stutter,” Firth said in a Web chat following a recent screening of the “The King’s Speech."
Mackesey served as a tutor who did just this: reverse-engineering his therapy tactics to steer Lind toward a consistent and believably imperfect speaking voice that would bring her lines to life. Because no two people stutter the same way, they had to come up with a speech impediment that fit Lind’s age and body type and work on using the kind of breath support it takes to stutter.
“When people who stutter come to see this play, I want them to feel compassion and respect,” Mackesey said.
Audience response was positive at a Feb. 2 reading at Emory’s Center for Ethics, where arts organizations bring in their works for students to discuss as part of the center’s Ethics & the Arts Initiative.
“I was trying not to feel uncomfortable when she began to speak,” said Center for Ethics’ Carlton Mackey after first hearing Lind in character. “But I constantly had a feeling of discomfort. It wasn’t that Margo was making me uncomfortable, it was that her stuttering was a character in and of itself.”
Portraying stuttering realistically, yet positively, is why Mackesey feels strongly that Lind’s role in “Carapace” will prompt sympathy from audiences. It’s also why he advises his patients to take their children to see “The King’s Speech,” in spite of its R rating.
For Joella Hricik of Druid Hills, whose 13-year-old son speaks with a stutter, the film brought up some familiar scenes, as well as a hope that people who see it will demystify the disability.
“We were all laughing in the beginning with the bad speech therapist,” Hricik said, recounting several hit-and-miss visits with specialists over the years. “Most children who stutter are often told of all the famous people who used to stutter. You go into the speech therapist’s office and see a poster of James Earl Jones who now has one of the best voices in Hollywood. It makes it seem as though it magically went away. You never see the hard work it takes to overcome it.”
Some of the techniques Firth’s character uses in the film help people who stutter in real life, such as singing or grouping words into phrases before you start talking, said one of Hricik’s sons, Houston Shrader.
“People think of stuttering as a rarity, or maybe they even think of that pig from Looney Tunes,” Shrader said. “This movie shows how certain people have trouble talking, which most people don’t even think about. I would imagine that people in wheelchairs feel the same way. Walking and talking are two things people normally take for granted. But when someone watches ‘The King’s Speech,’ it will completely change their view on talking.”
Mackesey's tips when listening to stuttering:
- Maintain eye contact and demonstrate patient and unconditional listening.
- Refrain from advice such as "slow down," "think before you talk" or "take a breath." These statements add a sense of impatience and fuel more severe stutters.
- Excusing children from activities like plays or oral presentations enables the problem and increases phobia. Get help from a speech-language pathologist as well as teachers and problem-solve with the child participating as the goal.
- Parents and teachers must intervene to stop teasing and bullying.
- For more resources, visit www.stutteringhelp.org and www.westutter.org.
“Carapace.”
Feb. 11 to March 6. $25-$30. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
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