Thespians on Diction
Once, during the intermission of a play, my music director stood up from the pit, banged on the stage, and yelled, “Diction!” I thought it was really weird that he would do that, especially when there were still people in the audience. I understand now, though. Diction is one of the most important parts of a performance. Don’t know what it means? Dictionary.com says it is: DICTION [dik-shuh-n] the accent, inflection, intonation, and speech-sound quality manifested by an individual speaker, usually judged in terms of prevailing standards of acceptability; enunciation. Got it? Good. I’ll say it in English, too, because I don’t know about you, but I don’t always speak dictionary. Basically, diction means you pronounce your consonants sharply, like you’re stabbing them, and your vowels roundly, like you are trying way too hard to push them out of your mouth. It’s really important, because if you don’t pronounce your…
