das gut, O'leary, merci, gov'ner!

My church does a wonderful children's service during the school year. It has lively music, silly drama, and object lessons. This will be my third season being involved with this little venture. I admit it is a lot of fun, and I have a great group of people I get to work with. Yes, I am a drama nerd.

I am currently learning a script for an upcoming service and I am in big trouble with this. You see, my character has a monologue. Memorization is work for me, as I promptly forget all my lines once the task is done. However this script has an added difficulty level. Within the space of about three minutes, my character will be speaking in four distinct yet different accents, German, Irish, French, and Cockney. Sigh. I do one accent well, Southeastern American, or Southern. I've tried out my "accents" out on my kids. They laugh and scoff. The older one then reads the same lines with proper accenting in place.

I've tried to play u-tube videos of movie clips, no help so far. I've gone to websites that give tips on how to speak with a certain accent. I still struggle. It doesn't help that Irish and Cockney have some strong similarities. French? Forget it. The best I can do with German is switch W for V. It will all likely sound like some poor southern woman trying to speak with non southern accent and failing.

My best hope is to learn the lines and just mangle through the accents as best as I can. Thank goodness these scripts lean heavily on humor to help get the point across. Comedy I can do. I wonder if I can work a prat fall into my routine?