The Road to Language Interview with Barbara Rubin
Ted Sod, Roundabout’s Education Dramaturg, sat down with dialect coach Barbara Rubin to discuss her work on The Road to Mecca.
Ted Sod: Tell us about yourself. How did you become a dialect coach?
Barbara Rubin: I didn’t set out to become a dialect coach. So it feels quite accidental and, since it’s relatively new for me, quite delightful! I trained as an actor and a director in my native South Africa and worked as both before I moved to the U.S., 12 years ago.
As a young director, I would assist actors with their dialect work. We didn’t have the luxury of working with coaches on those productions. But I think my fascination with dialects predates that. I was very conscious of speech sounds growing up in South Africa with immigrant grandparents (from Latvia and Lithuania), in a country with 11 offi cial languages and surrounded by so many varied dialects. I have early memories of trying to dialect coach my grandmother who couldn’t pronounce her “TH’s.” I think I annoyed her endlessly for a time. But she was quite happy with the way she sounded, and eventually I gave up.
When I moved to the U.S., one of my fi rst jobs was as assistant director to Athol Fugard on Sorrows and Rejoicings. We had a wonderful dialect coach on that production, Stephen Gabis, and I was intrigued by his way of working and by the actors’ process of becoming comfortable in the dialect. I remember thinking, “now that’s a cool job!”
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I started teaching at the American Academy of Dramatic Art about seven years ago, where I was initially hired as a voice and speech teacher. (Now I direct and teach Shakespeare there, too.) That’s when I really began to hone my skills. We have students from all over the country and all over the globe who are required to have good non- regional American speech. I also dialect coached many productions at AADA where I was able to experiment and devise ways of working. I love actors, and working with them in this highly detail-oriented and yet, I hope, truly creative way is very fulfi lling.
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