"Stage English" in Irene Worth obituary

[Steve Kl.]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2002 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>    The obituary for Irene Worth in today's NEW YORK TIMES
>    (www.nytimes.com) mentions that she learned "Stage English."
>    Stage English?  Any one of you teach that?

No, but I picked it up along the way in my background as an actor. The
only thing I can think of that seeped into my regular speech was the "hw"
pronunciation of "wh" words, which was something completely unknown to me
before acting. One of my acting profs at Michigan State was a contract
player from Columbia in the 50s and very much used stage diction when
teaching.

Someone at the recent ADS meeting (or was it 2 ago?) did a paper
comparing the r-fulness and r-lessness of actresses over the past several
decades... I don't know if she spoke of "stage English" per se, but it's
that kind of thing. Acting coaches who teach diction for the stage would
be the people who impart that kind of knowledge.

-- Steve Kl.