When Susanne Sulby was tasked with teaching Emmy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated actor Jean Smart a northern Louisiana accent for her latest project, she turned to her usual source: broadcast police reports.
As unusual as this may sound, it’s par for the course for Sulby, the dialect coach for the new Broadway play “Call Me Izzy.” Written by Jamie Wax, “Call Me Izzy” follows Isabelle Scutley, whose exploration of words, poetry and writing serves as an escape from her abusive marriage. The solo piece is set in Mansfield, Louisiana, which calls for a specific northern Louisiana accent. While Sulby has briefly dabbled with this accent before, she needed her own refresher before collaborating with Smart. To do so, she went straight to the source — which includes the aforementioned police reports.
“I try to find people who are local speakers,” Sulby, who also works as an actor, writer, public speaker and designated Linklater voice coach, told Broadway News. “The first point of attack is the internet. One of the resources that I use are police reports, officers giving a report on camera or people giving a report to a police officer.”
A member of law enforcement provides a strong baseline for understanding the accent of a specific area because they know the region and local goings-on and speak naturally. For “Call Me Izzy,” Sulby honed in on several police officers from the Mansfield and Shreveport areas.
