Hearing Voices

Hearing Voices is a dramatic work intended to explore the use of the Received Pronunciation accent by Australian actors in productions of theatrical classics, particularly Shakespeare, in Australia. It attempts to aurally document the standard accent used in Australian performances of the classics and demonstrate how this accent has changed over the duration of 60 years. Hearing Voices intersperses voice over and video with live performance to aurally and visually document the life and work of an Australian Actor/Manager in the Australian theatre from the 1940s to the current day. The text draws extensively on the experiences of John Bell and his contemporaries; a group recognised for its contribution to the transformation of the Australian theatre in the 1960s and 70s.