Helping the Marquise Find Her Voice
- Mark Byron Dallas
- Oct 27
- 2 min read
(and Take It for a Turn about the Town—a TLT BTS)
Every now and then, a coaching project comes along that feels like a real meeting of minds — where the work just clicks. Working with Jessika McQueen on her role as the Marquise de Merteuil in Wren Theatre’s production of Dangerous Liaisons was exactly that.
Jesse reached out a few months before rehearsals began, knowing she wanted plenty of time to really inhabit a British (rather than French) aristocratic accent — not just to sound “authentic,” but to understand how voice and character intertwine. From our first meeting, it was clear she was both meticulous and adventurous: she wanted structure, but she also wanted to explore.
We met in her airy ground-floor apartment in a Victorian terrace in Parkdale — the kind of place that immediately puts you at ease. In six sessions spread over three months, we built her accent step by step.
Early on, the production decided to go with modern English accents rather than French-influenced ones, which gave us a clear path to focus on precision, musicality, and character nuance. We experimented with different targets for sound and style, one of these being Catherine, Princess of Wales, whose Modern RP became a useful reference point.
Our sessions were a mix of drilling sounds and experimenting with options. We’d listen closely to subtle shifts in vowels and consonants, moving then immediately on to combining those into connected words, phrases, and exploring how the Marquise might use the rhythm or placement to convey control, wit, or hidden vulnerability.
I encouraged her to “take the accent for a walk” — to use it in everyday life, even asking questions in shops, so it began to feel like it belonged to her. Once you take ownership of an accent, it’s at your command. Jesse’s openness to the process made it easy to go deep and tailor each session to her learning style.
Jesse told me, “I went to rehearsals this weekend with a bold new confidence in my accent that has translated into the work, and I couldn’t be happier.”
By that point, we were no longer “doing” the accent — we were living in it. We went over everything with a “fine-toothed comb,” adding texture, ease, and specificity, until it felt like a natural extension of Jesse’s performance.
When I later went to see Dangerous Liaisons, Jesse was simply phenomenal. Every nuance of her performance — her voice, her timing, her presence — brought the Marquise de Merteuil vividly to life. Watching her on stage felt like the perfect culmination of a wonderfully collaborative project.
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