“I literally ended up losing my voice,” she told The Sunday Magazine’s Piya Chattopadhay. 

A visit to an ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctor revealed that she had bruised her vocal chords. After reflecting on the ordeal Bay realized that, in order to be taken more seriously, she was trying to sound more like a grown man — in other words, to adopt a voice that many people, consciously or not, associate with power and authority.

Today, Bay is a dialect and speech coach based in Los Angeles. She’s coached big names in Hollywood, business and politics, and she’s hosted a podcast called Permission to Speak.

One of her key tenets for clients to learn is the importance of speaking with authenticity.

“For me, authentic means caring about what we actually care about — out loud,” she said. “What does it sound like to actually care?”

Often, she explained, people will speak in a monotone, presenting an unflappable image, someone untroubled by emotions.

Instead, she suggests, they might want to take a deep breath and tap into their emotions. Raising and lowering your pitch at the right moment, she said, can better convince a listener that you truly care about what you’re saying.

How do Canada’s party leaders rate?

Politicians, however, have to walk a fine line when speaking — and caring — out loud, otherwise they can end up sounding forced, rather than authentic.

David Ley, a theatre professor specializing in speech at the University of Alberta, analyzed clips of Canada’s three federal, English-speaking party leaders who currently have a seat in the House of Commons — people for whom a compelling voice is a crucial rhetorical weapon.

He gave low marks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s often animated performances.

“He uses it too much, do you know what I mean? Like it’s too theatrical,” he told the CBC’s Craig Desson and Kate Evans for the radio special It’s Pronounced Why.

“There’s an unnecessary amount of musicality there, which makes it easier in some ways to dismiss what he’s saying.”

Ley said the prime minister’s style might be better suited to theatre — perhaps appropriate for the one-time drama teacher — and that in the House of Commons, at least, he might be better served with a toned down, “matter-of-fact” approach.

Candice Bergen, the interim Conservative leader, more effectively used “a constantly rising and falling inflection” in her voice, he said.

“She gives you the six o’clock news voice, and that is the voice of: ‘this is the truth,'” he said — a good tone to use when in opposition and pointing out the government’s flaws.

He said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s approach is likely informed by his past work as a lawyer.

“He’s going up, and he’s building a case, right? And then he comes in, and he drops [his voice] down with … the final kind of point,” Ley said. “I think it’s actually pretty effective.”

The sound of power

As Ley explained, all three leaders demonstrated noticeably different speaking styles. But they all have the same goal: to earn the attention of viewers and voters.

There’s a greater variety today in how people define “the standard sound of power,” as Bay describes it.

In decades past, that sound of power was often attributed to the way people in authority spoke. In North America at least, those people were white men, she said, pointing to powerful orators such as former U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

Vocal patterns more frequently associated with women — such as vocal fry — or immigrants’ accents were not seen as being as powerful, she explained. That’s not always the case these days.

Some of the most well-known voices in American politics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, “do not sound like the standard of power, but [they] also are so authentic,” Bay said.

Bay said that public speaking now is often “the dance between strength and warmth.”

“Strength is how competent we seem, how much we are willing to say, ‘I believe what I’m saying because I know I’m right.’ And warmth is how much we’re willing to bring love in: ‘I believe I’m right and I’m taking care of you,'” she explained.

The accent glass ceiling

The question of authenticity has also become more complex in stage theatre, as much as it has in the political theatre.

Vancouver-based actor Al Miro was born in Italy, and immigrated to Canada when he was a boy. No one ever commented on his accent, until he auditioned for a local theatre school when he was about 19.

“The feedback that I got was, ‘You know, you did a good job, but we can’t offer you a spot in the school because you have an accent and we wouldn’t have any roles for you,'” he told CBC Radio.

Miro’s since worked in places like Milan, Toronto and in off-Broadway shows in New York. But along the way, he estimates he spent $13,000 US on accent and dialect coaching to get rid of his natural speech.

“I thought … if this is going to stop me from having the career that I want, then I’m just going to put everything I’ve got to ‘fix it,'” he said.

Miro found that he would often be offered minor roles, like a waiter, instead of a lead character or main romantic interest, despite his impressive resume.

“If you have an accent … in the film world, you are seen as lower class. [But] it depends also on the kind of accents, right? If you have a British accent, then that’s not true — that’s going to be [seen as] elevated.” 

Bay says she receives emails “every day” from actors who describe similar experiences, sometimes leading to long-lasting insecurities.

“If English is their second language and they have been in the public eye for decades … they have a long list in the back of their mind of every critic who has ever commented on their accent,” she said. “And it does not leave them.”

Miro is doing his best to pick away at those biases in the industry, speaking up on behalf of other accented actors.

He says that if you’re an actor with a non-Western accent, you can actually turn it to your advantage, as it can lend authenticity to shows and other projects that aim to reflect a more accurate and diverse world than in the bygone eras of Hollywood.

“To me, it makes them more interesting,” he said. “Sometimes I see a scene and somebody has an accent, and suddenly I see the scene in a fresh way. That’s actually exciting to me.”

According to Bay, it can be hard to find one’s “true voice” — and even then, to realize that it can change or adapt depending on the situation. To her, you’ve found that authentic voice if you feel joy when expressing it.

“If you are able to share in a high-stakes moment … and also have a bit of mischievous play — you know, dancing inside of you — you’ve done it,” she said. “But the absence of joy is the greatest sign that you’re off your voice.”

Written by Jonathan Ore. Interviews by Annie Bender, Craig Desson and Kate Evans.