Interview: Liz B. Williams of COME FROM AWAY at Ovation Theatre

The Canadian musical Come From Away, which took Broadway by storm in 2017, has finally opened up to licensing possibilities for community theatres, just in time for the 25th anniversary of the events it portrays, the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. For this article, I sat down with Liz B. Williams, an actor in the Ovation Theatre’s production of Come From Away in Bakersfield, CA. Come From Away is notable for making its actors pull double-duty on stage. Every performer plays a multitude of roles throughout the nonstop one-act musical, switching back and forth between different characters in different costumes, different personalities, and different accents, often without stepping off stage. For Liz B. Williams (who plays Janice & Others), the multitasking started long before the opening night curtain went up. She doubled off-stage as the dialect coach.

Come From Away is a musical of unique linguistic complexity. The story takes place in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. Thus, the most represented accent on stage is the Newfoundlander accent. Not exactly the most common accent for actors to have in their repertoire. If learning this distinctive accent from scratch weren’t challenging enough for the actors, they have to weave between it and at least one other main accent – but likely two or three – as the musical tells the story of thousands of people from across the globe being stranded in that tiny town during the catastrophe.

Hence, the dialect coach. Dialect coaches can be hard to come by in community theatre, but for a production like Come From Away, they are essential. Williams stepped into this role for the very first time on this production. “I’ve grown up being able to imitate things, so I felt like I had a bit of a natural ability,” William told me. “Then when I took that class [on accents and dialects at Berg Studios in Los Angeles], I began to understand the science behind it.”

Indeed, there is a science behind speech sounds: linguistics, the scientific study of language, includes within its domain the studies of sounds (phonetics), sound patterns and stress (phonology), and the interaction between language and society (sociolinguistics). These come equipped with a special alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which has a one-to-one sound-to-symbol correlation. Williams is not a trained linguist. She lamented that she is still shaky on the IPA, but seeks to improve her knowledge of it. However, she has some experience with certain linguistic approaches that she has picked up either from that class at Berg Studios or from other theatrical studies. “We know how to project. We know how to really enunciate and to chew on our consonants and those types of things.” Her natural ear for accents, which she displayed by hopping seamlessly through examples throughout our interview, also helps tremendously.

Williams and I agreed that one of the biggest challenges of accent training is finding ways to connect with the actors. “I have a knack for speaking different ‘languages’ to different people,” said Williams. “I can identify what they need to hear in order for it to click for them.” This skill, essential for anyone in a teaching role, bridged the gaps in Williams’ linguistic background. 

Some of these different “languages” that she relied on: discussing the placement of sounds in the mouth (e.g. for a British accent, “the sound is forward and you’re using the tip of your tongue and the lips and the teeth”); focusing on physicality, tone, cadence, and other acting mannerisms for the different characters; engaging in call-and-response tasks with the actors; and yes, including the IPA transcriptions in their script materials. 

The linguistic challenges of Come From Away are great but, as Williams told me, they are “the backbone of the show.” The accents and the diversity of the show ultimately strengthen Come From Away. They make the musical unique, and they allow it to tell a complex story efficiently and effectively. 

“This show is centered around this relatively undiverse community and then they’re bombarded with all of these people… it’s set [in Newfoundland], but it’s about everybody’s experience, and you have to hit home the differences in the people, the differences in where they come from,” Williams elaborated. “I think if… everybody’s talking in a standard American accent, you lose half of it. You lose the reality of the situation and the fact that this was a true story that was real people. Why white-wash that? Why strip that? That is such a richness that you almost never see.”

Williams reported that her castmates worked diligently on their accent studies. Even those who worried most about this challenge rose to the occasion. Having attended the opening night performance, I can attest to the fact that the whole cast succeeded in not just encapsulating one dialect but in navigating between every one they were faced with.

Come From Away runs at the Ovation Theatre in Bakersfield until September 13.