My church built an exquisite new sanctuary, with seating for 800 people. We drama minister folks got a beautiful raised stage, with exits on either side and a connecting hallway in back. We were in heaven! But church buildings need to be multi-functional. We share our space with the choir, with a rock band, and with potted flowers. Our acting space, then, is somewhat crowded.
Staging pieces in a small space can be tricky. Here are some of the things I learned.
To define your acting space, mentally draw a line from the lowest seats house left and house right to the upstage center of your stage. (Just a quick brush up: if you're standing on stage facing the audience, your left hand is pointing to stage left. If you're sitting in the audience, facing the stage, your left hand is pointing house left. The end of the stage closest to the audience is downstage, while the end farthest from them is upstage. There. End of lesson). If you view that point at upstage center as the apex of a vee, now you know where your action needs to take place...inside the vee. Everything should take place inside that vee. The edges are your view lines for the audience.
If your acting space is shallow and wide, like ours, your vee will be very wide, and your action will tend to string out in a line. Keeping the action realistic in this configuration is tough, but it can be done. Your actors will need to cheat as much as possible. (Cheat; addressing the audience at 1/4 face. In real life, people face one another to chat. On stage, they turn 1/4 away from each other to let the audience in. Elizabethan actors turned fully to the audience, sometimes taking a step or two down toward them, to deliver their speeches. They broke the fourth wall, and cheated the other actors. Hence the term). You may have to have them cheat more than 1/4 if your stage is very wide - it looks very odd to have actors face each other across twelve feet of empty space!
If your acting space is narrow and deep, you have another set of challenges. Your vee will be narrow but steep, and you'll find your actors bunched up in the center. You will want to work the edges of the vee, rather than the center. You action will need to take place downstage center for the most part...depending upon the number of actors, you'll have view problems if you place the action upstage in a crowd.
Don't forget to consider the angle of the house floor. Most church floors are flat. Your upstage action will be lost if you're working with a flat floor, so plan on moving key characters downstage. An angled floor is a Godsend (if you'll pardon the pun) because you can move upstage, and your performing area automatically grows in depth.
Don't forget to stage for your sound system. Once you've identified the piece you're going to perform, make sure and chat with your sound guy before you stage it! He has a specific number of instruments he can assign to you. If there will be fixed microphones on stage, make sure you determine where they will be placed, and plan on centering your action near them.
Don't forget to stage for your lights. We have minimal control over placement of lights in our church, so we have to be careful as to where we place the action in pieces. Lighting can be an incredibly effective tool in your piece. It can also blow you up if you don't think about it at the outset!
Don't forget to stage for your video. Our church has a video camera system that allows the message to be broadcast throughout the various rooms of the church, and also the message to be recorded on DVD. For us, the camera is at the back of the house, and mounted about 18 feet off the floor. When we do a performance, we try to stage ourselves at the best depth and angle for the camera...not only will it show better for the rest of the church, but, hey, I'm on a DVD!
In our sanctuary, the images from the camera are relayed to large view screens on either side of the stage during the performance. We have the benefit of close-ups. If you have this capability, don't shy away from using it. With a camera, every seat in the house becomes a great seat!
Finally, don't forget to plan your entrances and exits. How will your actors get on and off stage? Does the piece require a black out to end it? If so, how do the actors get offstage? These are little details that will help you succeed in your staging, regardless of the space!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Directing for Empathy
When I write a piece, I hear the voices of my actors in my head. You can pre-cast your pieces when you work with a consistent ensemble of actors, such as a church drama ministry group. I know their capabilities, and tend to cast them in roles that are comfortable for them. But if you change those roles around, you can find new and really powerful areas of opportunity.
Consider this dialog. Veronica is waiting at a café. Archie rushes in with a plant, which he gives to her as a gift. He apologizes for being late and then pours out his heart, ending with this:
Archie: …If you told me to go away, Veronica, although it would be like tearing my very lungs out, I would do it if that were your wish. What I’m saying, Veronica, is… well, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
One of my volunteers, however, a seasoned professional actor, suggested that Archie try to be as nice as possible. He suggested the actor play as if he was going to be gentle and forgiving no matter what. If you read it that way, the argument takes a whole different direction.
The actor tried it, and we laughed so hard we fell off our chairs.
Giving the character the added complication of trying to be nice shifted the piece from a commonplace (albeit funny) argument into a sweetly engaging romantic comedy. Where I had planned on a quick and funny bit, changing Archie’s attitude added a level of empathy that elevated the piece from a skit to a sketch.
The point is that you can elevate the pieces you direct by looking for that empathetic edge. In skits, characters are written to establish specific points. Finding different emotional planes for the actor lets you add additional meaning to the skit, moving it from a “little show” to a professional presentation.
Next time you work on a skit, try challenging your ideas of how characters should play their parts. You’ll be amazed at what they discover!
Excerpt from Love's Last Bloom, by John Reinhart, from www.reinharthouse.com/scripts
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Moving with Intent
Volunteer actors are working for all of the right reasons: their heart is in their work. You got to love ‘em. But, you most often have to help them with stage movement. Intention is the hardest one for them to get.
Let’s say, for giggle and grins, in real life you are having an argument with your spouse. Let’s say that you are the husband, and your spouse is the wife. She asks you one of those questions that you realize you can’t answer without giving up a large part of your dignity, you so choose classic husband move #304, leave the room without answering. But you wife has seen #304 and counters with “where do you think you’re going?” You say “to the garage” over your shoulder as you storm out.
In real life, you don’t wait for your wife to ask you a question before you storm out. You’re stormin’, Norman, because you want out of that room.
On stage, of course, the actor knows the actress is going to stop him with her question. Newbie actors, and I’ve seen it time and time again, most often pause on their way offstage to receive the question. They head toward the door, and then linger if the question doesn’t come. In rehearsal, we go over the spot.
“What are you waiting for?” “For her to say her line.”
Having used classic husband move #304 many times myself, it would be a blessing if my wife couldn’t get the “where do you think you’re going” response before I got out the door. But, she’s quick. So I push my actors to walk right offstage, even though they know the question is coming.
The actor should be feeling the motivation underneath the movement. The character's mad at his wife. He wants out of there ("Run, Luke, run!"). The volunteers need to forget about themselves and see the moment through the eyes of the character. Once the actor adopts the character's energy and angst, you'll see decisive movements that are realistic.
An actor’s movement is much more powerful to the audience that his voice. If you don’t believe me, try singing the Star Spangled Banner while flapping your arms like a chicken. Just the mental image tells you everything you need to know about the power of movement.
So I direct my actors to hit the bricks. Go through that door like you mean it.
The caveat, of course, it to make sure that the actress whose line follows is on top of her cue, so that the actor doesn’t actually make it out the door. I was in Joe Orton’s Loot many years ago, and was slow on my cue. My character had a question to ask the exiting Inspector, but I was just plain caught up in the wrong moment. I looked up to ask my question, and he was gone. I was all by myself, and there was simply no plausible way for the Inspector to come back on. I ran to the door, swung it open, and yelled my question offstage. A moment later, the Inspector returned. “What did you say?...” and we went on from there. Phew!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Directing MicroMoments
In Playing the Arcs (published in Director’s Line and Associated Content), we learned about giving the character an arc to follow in a scene. He comes in at one level, is taken to a new level by the action in the scene, and comes down from that new level to the end of the scene. Looking at a scene from that perspective can be very helpful.
Within the scene, you’ll find several moments in which the same arc takes place on a smaller scale. Sometimes they can be short. I call them micromoments, like this scene, which comes at the top of a five minute sketch. It takes place in a pretentious restaurant. Harley is well dressed in “business casual” clothing. Dolores is dressed to the nines. The waiter enters.
1 WAITER Would you like a refill of your Coke?
2 HARLEY Don’t say Coke like its poison. Yeah, as long as it’s free.
3 WAITER It’s free, sir.
4 DOLORES Harley, don’t be so rude.
5 HARLEY (to Dolores) Everything on their menu has all these weirdo ingredients, like crushed walnuts pesto and ginger/thyme bruolee. I don’t know if they give free refills or not.
6 WAITER Well, there is a Taco Bell on the corner. They give you free refills.
7 HARLEY Listen here, sunny boy…
8 DOLORES Harley, don’t. You’re embarrassing me!
9 HARLEY …I’ve bought and sold dumps like this a million times over. The only reason I’m sitting here now is because some dimwit asked me to meet him here so that he can plead his case. So don’t go sticking your nose up at me. I’m asking you for a free refill. Do you think you can handle that?
10 WAITER Of course. And would the lady like a free refill as well?
11 DOLORES Yes, please…
12 HARLEY No. She’s had enough.
13 DOLORES Harley, I want to have…
14 HARLEY (Harley fixes eyes with the waiter) She’s had enough Coca Cola for today.
15 WAITER (Pauses) Very good, sir. (exits)
The purpose of this exchange is to show the coarseness of Harley’s character. In line 6 the waiter suggests that the Harley might not be up to the restaurant’s standards. He has the potential of insulting Harley’s wife in line 10. Is the waiter baiting Harley? In line 6, it looks like he is.
The key to playing the waiter is to give him an air of supreme self confidence. If we know that the restaurant is pretentious, we can assume the waiter is as well. He has complete control over Harley’s food, Harley’s dining experience, and even over Harley himself. However, the waiter’s performance should build from the waiter’s assumption that Harley fits in at line 1 to his awareness that Harley is coarse at line 6 to a mocking pretentiousness at line 10. The waiter’s character cements in when he and Harley lock eyes at line 14. “She’s had enough Coca Cola for today, beat beat beat, Very good, sir”
The waiter drags out his response during those three beats, showing the audience that waiter is wresting control from Harley.
In this micromoment, it becomes clear that Harley is a self-made man, as he explains in line 9. We can see in lines 2 and 5 that he feels like a fish out of water. Dolores’ Coke becomes a metaphor for Harley’s struggle for control. And Harley feels that he wins the struggle in line 14, although Dolores pays the price.
Playing Harley in this short moment offers a rich panacea of nuance. He swings from a somewhat self-conscious novice in the culinary world at line 2 to taking control in line 14. He can flare his temper in line 9, but needs to rein it back in by line 14. Although the moment could devolve into a fistfight, Harley’s steely-eyed glare at the waiter locks his power and control over the circumstances in place.
The point of this exercise is to demonstrate how much character and power you can pull out of a 45-second moment. This micromoment, if carefully directed, can set the tone and flavor for the rest of the sketch.
Keep your eyes open for micromoments in every scene. They come in little places, like glance-exchanges between characters. Playing them well makes all the difference between a volunteer show and a professional presentation.
Scene excerpted from Big Spender, available at www.reinharthouse.com/scripts
Monday, April 14, 2008
Writing Killer Comedy Sketches
I use the word "sketch" to describe the pieces I write, although people always ask me "did you come up with that skit?" Whatever you call it, it's easy to describe; a three to five minute dramatic piece involving two or more characters. I call them sketches because to me you're sketching in the characters and circumstances, as opposed to a full blown scene, in which you have time to fill in details.
WHAT'S COMEDY? Philosophers can argue for their entire lives over what makes us laugh, but you already know what's funny. We laugh at things that are unexpected, like a good pratfall. We laugh at embarrassing things, although only when they happen to other people. We laugh at insults, although not when they are aimed at us. Repetition is funny (I almost always include a catch phrase that gets repeated three or four times in a sketch, like "a wet cat."). And we laugh at real life situations, those with which we can identify, that have gone terribly awry. What makes you laugh? If it makes you laugh, chances are good it will make the audience laugh.
THE RULE OF THREES: Watch a classic sitcom, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Cheers or Friends or Frazier. Watch the timing. The jokes go boom, Boom, BOOM. Little joke, bigger joke, knee-slapper. Once you start thinking about threes, you'll find that your skit writes itself. In fact, a well written comedy sketch is a three-hit joke. The jokes don't have to follow one another directly. Sometimes the joke is in a situation, like a wet cat shaking itself on a guy's new shirt. He reacts, complains, shoves the cat in the bathroom and closes the door. His girlfriend comes in. They chat, say something funny about going out. She goes to freshen up. We hear the scream when she goes into the bathroom. The cat runs past and out the front door. A friend shows up and says something about the dish they're serving in the restaurant downstairs. "It looked like a wet cat!" Three, see? Si.
RELATE: What makes a comedy sketch funny is that the audience can relate to it. It's hard for us to relate to Zabnar the Cloud King, unless Zabnar keeps getting phone calls that interrupt his plans to take over the planet. We don't have any experience with being the Cloud King, and that won't ring true. But we've all been interrupted by somebody on the phone trying to sell us a newspaper. As long as the gets annoyed by the phone, Zabnar is a guy just like us, and he becomes believable.
PACING: In the movies, in a big drama, the actor says "a wet cat?", and the music goes Ba Ba BAAAAA, and the camera zooms in to catch the tear in his eye. In real life, people seldom take long, slow pauses in their conversations unless there are very deep issues at stake, or unless they aren't paying attention. In writing drama, you use those long deep pauses to help the audience grasp a circumstance and build suspense. In writing comedy, you gotta keep things moving. If the audience gets a chance to think, they'll stop laughing. If you let them think, you've lost them. Once we start laughing, we like to keep laughing. If your piece moves between hilarity and serious drama, the audience will get confused and won't trust it.
WRITE FOR YOUR ACTORS: Unless you're a professional writer composing for professional actors, you are most likely going to be working with amateurs. Amateurs most often don't know how to make a pratfall. Most of them aren't very good at showing emotions. Most of them don't have a clue about timing and pacing. So, you, as the writer, have to take care of that for them. If you write about real emotions, like frustration and disappointment, you give them a solid tool to help them perform with confidence. Everybody's been frustrated, disappointed, even annoyed by a wet cat. Since those emotions are daily occurrences for most of us, it's easy for amateur actors to hit those. Unless you have a skilled actor in the group, do not write spit takes or pratfalls...they will misfire and your piece will fail. Don't write long, drawn out speeches. They can be difficult for an untrained actor to memorize, and you're flirting with disaster.
BE CLEAR: Robert Frost said "people tell me they understand a poem, and then ask 'what were you getting at?'" A sketch is a tiny plot of time, so you have to be clear. Picture your central theme, and then work only from that. Good jokes should only be included if they support what you're trying to say. Characters should only be in the piece if they support the central idea. Quirky characters don't work, unless they are the meaning of the piece itself.
END IT: One of the first things you should think about when writing your piece is how it will end. Monty Python used weird graphics and startling video changes to cut away from their pieces because they most often didn't wrap up well. Don't forget Storytelling 101: Beginning, middle, end. Beginning, middle, end. One, two, three. Don't mess that up, because you're a good writer, and you want your actors to like your work.
See? That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, think about the point you're trying to make. Find what's funny in it. Figure out who's going to play in it. And figure out how you're going to end it. Be aware that it will run about a minute and a half per page, and, boom, you're a comedy writer!
Writer's Note: This pieces was published at eHow.com as How to Write a Killer Comedy Sketch and at AssociatedContent.Com as Writing Comedy Sketches that Kill.
WHAT'S COMEDY? Philosophers can argue for their entire lives over what makes us laugh, but you already know what's funny. We laugh at things that are unexpected, like a good pratfall. We laugh at embarrassing things, although only when they happen to other people. We laugh at insults, although not when they are aimed at us. Repetition is funny (I almost always include a catch phrase that gets repeated three or four times in a sketch, like "a wet cat."). And we laugh at real life situations, those with which we can identify, that have gone terribly awry. What makes you laugh? If it makes you laugh, chances are good it will make the audience laugh.
THE RULE OF THREES: Watch a classic sitcom, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Cheers or Friends or Frazier. Watch the timing. The jokes go boom, Boom, BOOM. Little joke, bigger joke, knee-slapper. Once you start thinking about threes, you'll find that your skit writes itself. In fact, a well written comedy sketch is a three-hit joke. The jokes don't have to follow one another directly. Sometimes the joke is in a situation, like a wet cat shaking itself on a guy's new shirt. He reacts, complains, shoves the cat in the bathroom and closes the door. His girlfriend comes in. They chat, say something funny about going out. She goes to freshen up. We hear the scream when she goes into the bathroom. The cat runs past and out the front door. A friend shows up and says something about the dish they're serving in the restaurant downstairs. "It looked like a wet cat!" Three, see? Si.
RELATE: What makes a comedy sketch funny is that the audience can relate to it. It's hard for us to relate to Zabnar the Cloud King, unless Zabnar keeps getting phone calls that interrupt his plans to take over the planet. We don't have any experience with being the Cloud King, and that won't ring true. But we've all been interrupted by somebody on the phone trying to sell us a newspaper. As long as the gets annoyed by the phone, Zabnar is a guy just like us, and he becomes believable.
PACING: In the movies, in a big drama, the actor says "a wet cat?", and the music goes Ba Ba BAAAAA, and the camera zooms in to catch the tear in his eye. In real life, people seldom take long, slow pauses in their conversations unless there are very deep issues at stake, or unless they aren't paying attention. In writing drama, you use those long deep pauses to help the audience grasp a circumstance and build suspense. In writing comedy, you gotta keep things moving. If the audience gets a chance to think, they'll stop laughing. If you let them think, you've lost them. Once we start laughing, we like to keep laughing. If your piece moves between hilarity and serious drama, the audience will get confused and won't trust it.
WRITE FOR YOUR ACTORS: Unless you're a professional writer composing for professional actors, you are most likely going to be working with amateurs. Amateurs most often don't know how to make a pratfall. Most of them aren't very good at showing emotions. Most of them don't have a clue about timing and pacing. So, you, as the writer, have to take care of that for them. If you write about real emotions, like frustration and disappointment, you give them a solid tool to help them perform with confidence. Everybody's been frustrated, disappointed, even annoyed by a wet cat. Since those emotions are daily occurrences for most of us, it's easy for amateur actors to hit those. Unless you have a skilled actor in the group, do not write spit takes or pratfalls...they will misfire and your piece will fail. Don't write long, drawn out speeches. They can be difficult for an untrained actor to memorize, and you're flirting with disaster.
BE CLEAR: Robert Frost said "people tell me they understand a poem, and then ask 'what were you getting at?'" A sketch is a tiny plot of time, so you have to be clear. Picture your central theme, and then work only from that. Good jokes should only be included if they support what you're trying to say. Characters should only be in the piece if they support the central idea. Quirky characters don't work, unless they are the meaning of the piece itself.
END IT: One of the first things you should think about when writing your piece is how it will end. Monty Python used weird graphics and startling video changes to cut away from their pieces because they most often didn't wrap up well. Don't forget Storytelling 101: Beginning, middle, end. Beginning, middle, end. One, two, three. Don't mess that up, because you're a good writer, and you want your actors to like your work.
See? That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, think about the point you're trying to make. Find what's funny in it. Figure out who's going to play in it. And figure out how you're going to end it. Be aware that it will run about a minute and a half per page, and, boom, you're a comedy writer!
Writer's Note: This pieces was published at eHow.com as How to Write a Killer Comedy Sketch and at AssociatedContent.Com as Writing Comedy Sketches that Kill.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Directing Effective Comedy
You know the saying: the key to comedy is.......timing. That's for the actor. Directing comedy is a whole different can of worms, especially when working with inexperienced actors!
Finding comfort in an awkward circumstance. Right out of the gate, the audience has to feel comfortable with the actors performing the comedy. The actor (again, I'm fighting the gender-correctness tide by using "actor" and "he/his" to mean "actress" and "she/her" as well. I mean no disrespect to actresses or females in general, just trying to keep things moving!) must be self composed and confident. You'll lose the audience if they sense that the actor is struggling. The secret to composure is preparedness, which translates to rehearse rehearse rehearse.
Taking the words to heart. I push my actors really hard on memorizing their lines. To me, getting those lines in the head and the heart is job number one. I set up a six week rehearsal schedule for my church sketches (it sounds long, but we only meet for 1.5 hours a week). My guys have to get their lines memorized by the end of the second rehearsal. Why so tough? By the time we get to the fourth rehearsal, I want those lines to be second nature to them. The lines need to come out without thought. They can't do that until they've memorized them and rehearsed rehearsed rehearsed them without a script in hand. You'll see a good performance from an actor when he absolutely believes what he's saying. He just can't do that with a script still drifting in his mind.
The other reason I push memorization so hard is that I want the actors to take ownership of their words. New actors tend to simply memorize the words and fake the actions. The more they rehearse the scenes, however, the more meaning the words have for them. As the meaning comes in, the acting gets better, and the audience goes home happy.
What is in a word? As an actor, I'm a big believer in paraphrasing. "Let me say this in my own words." As a director, you have to be very careful to manage paraphrasing in comedy. Don't forget that most comedies are word plays. The author sets words and phrases in a specific order to capitalize on a laugh. Watch a good sitcom and you'll see how the lines are set up. Make sure your actors don't personalize the humor out of a moment!
Timing really is everything. Nothing will kill a comedy faster than a slow pace. Nobody pauses between speakers in real life. You say "how ya doin'' and I say "fine, thanks. You?" and you say "I could be better" just that fast. That's how your comedy should be; click-click-click-click. When you get your audience to the point where they want to laugh with you, they don't want to think any more. They just want to laugh. Pauses in the pacing gives them time to think, and they stop laughing. Close those gaps in the dialog. How? Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
That being said, obviously, there will be dramatic pauses that you'll want to play, and that's fine. Don't be afraid to build tension by making the audience wait for something to happen every now and again. Sometimes waiting is the most fun! But...not for an actor to answer his cue!
A comedy is like a good roller coaster ride. There are pauses while you build up to something really big. Then the big moment comes, and it's hit-hit-hit-hit and then you pause for a moment to build to the next one, and it's hit-hit-hit again. A good roller coaster ride leaves you feeling dizzy and out of breath. Your audience should be out of breath from laughing. The roller coaster comes to a stop shortly after the last big hit, so that you're still reeling as you step off the train. That's how your comedy should be, too. You manage all of that through your timing for the actors. Tighten their cues so that they almost step on one another, especially in the funnier moments.
You do have to pause, however, for laughs. If you run over a laugh, you train the audience to stop laughing so that they can hear the next line. "It was so funny I could hardly keep from laughing out loud!" is not something you want to hear!
Here's how it works: a laugh is like a wave. It starts with a kind of murmur, builds up to an out loud laugh, and then murmurs down again. If the audience starts laughing at something an actor says, have him wait until the out loud laugh begins to murmur down, and then have him continue. If he says the next line during the build-up murmur, the audience will miss it because they're laughing out loud, and will NOT laugh out loud next time because they know they'll miss something. If the actor waits until after the let-out murmur subsides, your timing will d-r-a-g and your audience will wonder what's going on and won't laugh so hard next time, either. Laughing is contagious, and you want to keep it rolling.
Don't be afraid to laugh out loud at the funny parts in rehearsal. The actors need to hear it; it helps them know what's funny, and it helps build their confidence.
Don't get jaded. I have to be careful to keep from hitting this wall. When you first read through a piece, it's a scream. But, five weeks later, the jokes are stale. Yeah, yeah, funny. Fight that tendency to punch up jokes to keep them funny. Watch Disney's movie "Chicken Little" to see an example of punched up jokes. The premise is good, but it seems like somewhere somebody decided they couldn't trust the humor in the film, and "spiced up" the production with extra dialog and jokes. Be careful! If it was a scream to you on the first read through, trust that the audience will think so, too.
Be careful, too, that your actors don't telegraph jokes. Sometimes they'll put their hand over here so that when the other guy comes in he can wave and it will be real funny. It's real funny, except that the audience will wonder why his hand is over there, and when the guy comes in the wave will seem unnatural and the joke will flop. That's called telegraphing a joke, and you have to make sure your actors don't fall for it!
Finally, have fun with your comedy. Sure, directing it can be stressful. Sure, it takes diligence on your part to keep it funny. But, hey, you're working with a whole bunch of people with the sole intention of making other people laugh. How cool is that? Relax. It'll be great!
Finding comfort in an awkward circumstance. Right out of the gate, the audience has to feel comfortable with the actors performing the comedy. The actor (again, I'm fighting the gender-correctness tide by using "actor" and "he/his" to mean "actress" and "she/her" as well. I mean no disrespect to actresses or females in general, just trying to keep things moving!) must be self composed and confident. You'll lose the audience if they sense that the actor is struggling. The secret to composure is preparedness, which translates to rehearse rehearse rehearse.
Taking the words to heart. I push my actors really hard on memorizing their lines. To me, getting those lines in the head and the heart is job number one. I set up a six week rehearsal schedule for my church sketches (it sounds long, but we only meet for 1.5 hours a week). My guys have to get their lines memorized by the end of the second rehearsal. Why so tough? By the time we get to the fourth rehearsal, I want those lines to be second nature to them. The lines need to come out without thought. They can't do that until they've memorized them and rehearsed rehearsed rehearsed them without a script in hand. You'll see a good performance from an actor when he absolutely believes what he's saying. He just can't do that with a script still drifting in his mind.
The other reason I push memorization so hard is that I want the actors to take ownership of their words. New actors tend to simply memorize the words and fake the actions. The more they rehearse the scenes, however, the more meaning the words have for them. As the meaning comes in, the acting gets better, and the audience goes home happy.
What is in a word? As an actor, I'm a big believer in paraphrasing. "Let me say this in my own words." As a director, you have to be very careful to manage paraphrasing in comedy. Don't forget that most comedies are word plays. The author sets words and phrases in a specific order to capitalize on a laugh. Watch a good sitcom and you'll see how the lines are set up. Make sure your actors don't personalize the humor out of a moment!
Timing really is everything. Nothing will kill a comedy faster than a slow pace. Nobody pauses between speakers in real life. You say "how ya doin'' and I say "fine, thanks. You?" and you say "I could be better" just that fast. That's how your comedy should be; click-click-click-click. When you get your audience to the point where they want to laugh with you, they don't want to think any more. They just want to laugh. Pauses in the pacing gives them time to think, and they stop laughing. Close those gaps in the dialog. How? Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
That being said, obviously, there will be dramatic pauses that you'll want to play, and that's fine. Don't be afraid to build tension by making the audience wait for something to happen every now and again. Sometimes waiting is the most fun! But...not for an actor to answer his cue!
A comedy is like a good roller coaster ride. There are pauses while you build up to something really big. Then the big moment comes, and it's hit-hit-hit-hit and then you pause for a moment to build to the next one, and it's hit-hit-hit again. A good roller coaster ride leaves you feeling dizzy and out of breath. Your audience should be out of breath from laughing. The roller coaster comes to a stop shortly after the last big hit, so that you're still reeling as you step off the train. That's how your comedy should be, too. You manage all of that through your timing for the actors. Tighten their cues so that they almost step on one another, especially in the funnier moments.
You do have to pause, however, for laughs. If you run over a laugh, you train the audience to stop laughing so that they can hear the next line. "It was so funny I could hardly keep from laughing out loud!" is not something you want to hear!
Here's how it works: a laugh is like a wave. It starts with a kind of murmur, builds up to an out loud laugh, and then murmurs down again. If the audience starts laughing at something an actor says, have him wait until the out loud laugh begins to murmur down, and then have him continue. If he says the next line during the build-up murmur, the audience will miss it because they're laughing out loud, and will NOT laugh out loud next time because they know they'll miss something. If the actor waits until after the let-out murmur subsides, your timing will d-r-a-g and your audience will wonder what's going on and won't laugh so hard next time, either. Laughing is contagious, and you want to keep it rolling.
Don't be afraid to laugh out loud at the funny parts in rehearsal. The actors need to hear it; it helps them know what's funny, and it helps build their confidence.
Don't get jaded. I have to be careful to keep from hitting this wall. When you first read through a piece, it's a scream. But, five weeks later, the jokes are stale. Yeah, yeah, funny. Fight that tendency to punch up jokes to keep them funny. Watch Disney's movie "Chicken Little" to see an example of punched up jokes. The premise is good, but it seems like somewhere somebody decided they couldn't trust the humor in the film, and "spiced up" the production with extra dialog and jokes. Be careful! If it was a scream to you on the first read through, trust that the audience will think so, too.
Be careful, too, that your actors don't telegraph jokes. Sometimes they'll put their hand over here so that when the other guy comes in he can wave and it will be real funny. It's real funny, except that the audience will wonder why his hand is over there, and when the guy comes in the wave will seem unnatural and the joke will flop. That's called telegraphing a joke, and you have to make sure your actors don't fall for it!
Finally, have fun with your comedy. Sure, directing it can be stressful. Sure, it takes diligence on your part to keep it funny. But, hey, you're working with a whole bunch of people with the sole intention of making other people laugh. How cool is that? Relax. It'll be great!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Playing the Arc
I spend a lot of time working with volunteer actors as a director of a church drama ministry. Beyond the standard yada-yada of gee you're doing something good for the church and for the community, I find a lot of fulfillment and fun in it. More than that, there's a lot to learn at it, too.
Newbie actors present a whole new range of challenges, and, trust me, most church volunteers are newbie actors! One of the things newbie actors need to learn is that every scene has an arc to follow.
Every scene starts at one place, but ends up somewhere else. The peak of the arc, it's highest point, comes when the main characters learn something new. It's an "ah ha" moment, and there is one in every scene. At least, there should be one. If you can't find it, grind every word and see if the author buried it in his choice of words in the dialog. If you still can't find it, you have to ask yourself why the scene is in the play in the first place. If it doesn't support the movement of the play, well, there may be a little round can next to your desk...
Within the scene, characters must follow an arc too. They begin the scene in one frame of mind, and exit in another. Obviously, this is true for major characters in a scene but not necessarily for the bit players. It would be really strange for the waiter who has two lines in a scene to have an epiphany while pouring iced tea!
The arc may be revealed in the writing, like someone bursting in and saying "Johnny's the guy who shot Willy!" But most often it is left to the actor to show the moment of revelation. The character grows, in knowledge, in attitude, in something that he needs to move the play forward. The audience needs to see that growth on the actor's face.
In playing the arc, the actor needs to be aware of his levels (I use "his" in the place of "his or her" or "their" because it's just silly to waste all those words. Let's you and I agree that by the word "his" I mean "his or her"...really, this gender-correctness thing is way out of whack!). Their performance needs to have an arc to it, too. In order for the revelation to come in as a high point, it must be preceded and followed by low points. Equally but oppositely, a low point must be bookended by high points. That way, the audience can see that the character has had a change.
My daughter had a middle school teacher who taught her kids to memorize speeches in a specific cadence; Four SCORE and seven Years AGO our forefathers BROUGHT...and whenever the school had a speaking event, you could tell which kids came from that teacher's class. Listen my CHILDREN and YOU shall HEAR of the midnight RIDE of...
Playing the arc needs to be subtle (unless you're doing melodrama, in which nothing is subtle). The low or high needs to follow the end of the previous scene. The lows and highs need to be in the same plane of realism. The revelation shouldn't be accompanied by a sudden gasp or the drop of a platter, unless called for in the script. The change needs to be big enough for the audience to see it, but small enough to pass for reality. You don't want the audience going "duh duh DUH!" in their heads when they're watching your scene.
Finally, you want the moment of revelation to be real for the actor. You want him to feel it, because the audience will feel it with him. We did a piece about a betrayal just a couple of weeks ago. The actress who played the betrayer completely stole the piece when her character had to decide whether to do the right thing or to tell a lie and betray her friend. Her face became ashen, tears rolled down her cheeks, and she paused and paused and paused until I started to think she might be dropping a line, and then she let out the line. The audience, as a unit, sighed in disappointment. They were 100% in the moment with her. I asked her later why she took that long pause. She said it was because she didn't want to betray her friend. You can't fake that reality, my friend.
So, there, my directorial friend, are my thoughts on playing the arc. Once you help your actors see the arcs in the pieces you direct, you'll find a whole new world of performance opens up for them.
Newbie actors present a whole new range of challenges, and, trust me, most church volunteers are newbie actors! One of the things newbie actors need to learn is that every scene has an arc to follow.
Every scene starts at one place, but ends up somewhere else. The peak of the arc, it's highest point, comes when the main characters learn something new. It's an "ah ha" moment, and there is one in every scene. At least, there should be one. If you can't find it, grind every word and see if the author buried it in his choice of words in the dialog. If you still can't find it, you have to ask yourself why the scene is in the play in the first place. If it doesn't support the movement of the play, well, there may be a little round can next to your desk...
Within the scene, characters must follow an arc too. They begin the scene in one frame of mind, and exit in another. Obviously, this is true for major characters in a scene but not necessarily for the bit players. It would be really strange for the waiter who has two lines in a scene to have an epiphany while pouring iced tea!
The arc may be revealed in the writing, like someone bursting in and saying "Johnny's the guy who shot Willy!" But most often it is left to the actor to show the moment of revelation. The character grows, in knowledge, in attitude, in something that he needs to move the play forward. The audience needs to see that growth on the actor's face.
In playing the arc, the actor needs to be aware of his levels (I use "his" in the place of "his or her" or "their" because it's just silly to waste all those words. Let's you and I agree that by the word "his" I mean "his or her"...really, this gender-correctness thing is way out of whack!). Their performance needs to have an arc to it, too. In order for the revelation to come in as a high point, it must be preceded and followed by low points. Equally but oppositely, a low point must be bookended by high points. That way, the audience can see that the character has had a change.
My daughter had a middle school teacher who taught her kids to memorize speeches in a specific cadence; Four SCORE and seven Years AGO our forefathers BROUGHT...and whenever the school had a speaking event, you could tell which kids came from that teacher's class. Listen my CHILDREN and YOU shall HEAR of the midnight RIDE of...
Playing the arc needs to be subtle (unless you're doing melodrama, in which nothing is subtle). The low or high needs to follow the end of the previous scene. The lows and highs need to be in the same plane of realism. The revelation shouldn't be accompanied by a sudden gasp or the drop of a platter, unless called for in the script. The change needs to be big enough for the audience to see it, but small enough to pass for reality. You don't want the audience going "duh duh DUH!" in their heads when they're watching your scene.
Finally, you want the moment of revelation to be real for the actor. You want him to feel it, because the audience will feel it with him. We did a piece about a betrayal just a couple of weeks ago. The actress who played the betrayer completely stole the piece when her character had to decide whether to do the right thing or to tell a lie and betray her friend. Her face became ashen, tears rolled down her cheeks, and she paused and paused and paused until I started to think she might be dropping a line, and then she let out the line. The audience, as a unit, sighed in disappointment. They were 100% in the moment with her. I asked her later why she took that long pause. She said it was because she didn't want to betray her friend. You can't fake that reality, my friend.
So, there, my directorial friend, are my thoughts on playing the arc. Once you help your actors see the arcs in the pieces you direct, you'll find a whole new world of performance opens up for them.
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