Using acting/theater to overcome stuttering?

[srdonjuan]

Hey everyone, I just joined the forum and this is my first post.

I recently saw a video of actress Emily Blunt and her speech to the American Institute for Stuttering. I've noticed quite a few famous actors who have used acting as a way to overcome their stuttering...Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Nicholas Brendon(from Buffy), Samuel L. Jackson and others all used acting as a way to overcome their stuttering and fears of speaking.

Emily Blunt mentioned that using accents and being in character worked as a way to neurologically change how she approached speaking. She likened it to being a record that was skipping and acting was moving the needle to another groove in her mind.

Has anyone here used acting or speaking with an accent as a tool against stuttering? I would think this would also serve as a great way to attack our fears of speaking in public.
I've experimented with accents a bit and have found that by "playing a part" I can speak almost completely fluently. Ironically, I haven't maintained an accent over a prolonged period of time because of being self conscious of how i sound. Am I the only one???

[Nemo]

An interesting topic ... A few thoughts on this:

It seems to work for some people. For some gifted individuals it could lead to fame and fortune, creating a 'virtuous circle' of fluency > professional success > confidence > more fluency > more success and confidence etc, instead of the old vicious circle of stuttering > less confidence > more stuttering. We hear about the successful stuttering actors such as Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis, but what about those who have not been successful and are now lost in obscurity? I'm sure there must be plenty of those. Not everyone is a good actor, and not everyone is extroverted enough to be an actor.

I also suspect that stutterers are fluent when playing a role because the play-acting serves as a distraction. Distraction as a fluency technique has its limits, however; after a while the mind gets used to the distraction so that the learned component of stuttering can again come to the fore and take over. So there is the risk that blocks can occur while, for instance, acting in a school play, which could have unpleasant results.

Also, stuttering is stress-related, so that the stress of standing in front of an audience could catch up with you.

One should also differentiate between theatre acting and movie acting. Acting before a camera is different than acting before a live audience. With camera acting there may be less stress, because if you stutter during a take, the cameraman can always do another take; whereas when you stand in front of an audience, the stress may be more severe. Both Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt are movie actors. Also, were they really SEVERE stutterers when younger?

Any other thoughts?

[JR123]

you cant relay on acting to overcome your stutter, ok you might feel fluent when acting, but after that, you cant act at home/ with friend/ with other people.
but it might be a way to make your self used to fluency, try it. maybe it will work for you!

[amey]

Bruce willis is an interesting one to watch in interviews. If a person didnt understand stuttering and the various tricks to hiding it, they would probably never know. He is actually ALL over the place with tricks. He strains his eyes off into the distance as if he is thinking about the right words, uses um and uh consistantly, his voice is dropped deeper, and his conversation in very guarded. Like I said, if a person didnt know what to look for, they would miss it. ---I wish he would show his stuttering.

[srdonjuan]

Thanks for your thoughts.. Most movie actors started on stage and I'm sure they likely would not enjoy acting and continue to do it if the stuttering began to return and be a major hindrance. I'm sure your right that we never hear about the failed actors that were casualties of stuttering.

My main point is not that stutterers can be successful, wealthy and famous actors, we know in very rare cases that that can happen. But rather can doing local stage performance serve as a tool to control our stuttering. I'm mainly interested in the mental aspect of roll playing and using different ways of speaking(accents, timing, rhythm, etc) to in a way "relearn" how to connect our mind to our speech mechanisms.

I'm mostly curious about using imitation as a tool to help gain control of our speech. When I was in London I saw on TV a special about a stutterer who over cam his stuttering imitating and eventually pattering his speaking after Tony Blair. They interviewed him and sure enough his timing, speech rhythm, and accent sound like Blair. He now has a school there to help stutterers.

Of course this will not work for everyone, but it is pretty interesting. I wonder if the mind does indeed use different neuropathways to communicate with the speech mechanisms when our speech is dramatically altered. If so there must be ways to utilize this.

I really appreciate your input.




PS - I assume most actors who stuttered had fairly minor stuttering blocks. I do know that Emily Blunt said at age 12 she had quite severe blocks and and was not able to read in school or say her name.