Writing for Multigenerational Audiences

If your church is like mine, it has two services; one traditional and one contemporary. At our church, the average age is comfortably above 50 in the traditional service, and comfortably below that in the contemporary. While this works great for the pastor, who can modify his message for each group, and for the choir, which can sing different songs, it makes producing dramas that must be effective for each group extremely difficult.

As a writer, I’ve often found that a piece that hits with the older audience will miss the younger set, and vice versa. Here are some ways that I’ve found to make each piece speak successfully to each group.

Begin with the Message

In Christian drama, each piece is designed to highlight a specific message. Let that message be your mission, your raison d’être. Compare each character against the message – does he fit? Is he telling the story? If not, chop him out or change him. In sketches, there’s no time for loose characters. That’s not a multigenerational thing. It’s just good writing.

The other rule of good writing is always the same, too: resolve a conflict. I recently judged a high school competition where each student wrote and performed his own piece. A stunning little actress played a piece called “The News” about a revolutionary war era bride whose husband had been called to war and was ultimately killed. It was well acted, but booooring. There was no problem to be resolved, which made it stunningly un-engaging. Make sure your characters have a problem to resolve. Their resolution should be your message.

I’ve found that the older generation relates to stories about honor and honesty, community spirit, and “doing the right thing.” The younger group responds better to stories about relationships, societal pressures, and personal responsibility. There is a very wide gap between the two.

Think of how the message affects each generation. Unless you are six years old, chances are pretty high that you are a member of one of them. Couch the message in terms that appeal to you. Then look at it through the eyes of the other generation. Will they get it?

Don’t be afraid to stretch the message to make it fit both groups. Say that the message is “love one another.” You could do a striking piece about a father/son situation, or a punker and an old lady stuck at a bus stop. There is love to be shown in each piece, and your message, although different in circumstance, is the same for each. Your job is to tell the story. You can bend it however you wish!

Mix Your Generations

The surest way to get the attention of each generation is to make sure each is represented in your piece. A piece about two elderly gentlemen may play with the older set, but could go right past the younger. An older gentleman sharing advice with a younger man, however, will more likely affect both groups.

There is a great source of humor in mixing the generations, too. Each group likes to laugh at themselves, and has to put up with the foibles of the other. That’s meaty stuff, there. Old people can never hear, and young people are self-absorbed. Play on those circumstances and you’ll have a sure fire hit!

I often find the message is most effective to both groups when the young and old discover it together. It is important to deliver the message subtly, of course. Nobody in real life says “I get it! We’ve got to love one another!” It just doesn’t happen like that. But when the punker and the old lady find a common truth, you’ll find that the moment will ring true for both audiences.

Don’t Forget the Rule of Threes

Comedy is comedy, whether it’s for octogenarians or teens. Don’t forget your basic rule of comedy – think in threes. Little joke, little joke, BIG joke. Set up, set up, Smack! Watch sitcoms and count the laughs – professional writers write in sets of three. Three is an ancient, mystic number. I’m pretty sure those ancient mystics wrote their skits in sets of three, too!

Find the Truth

My sister-in-law is a famous actress. I was speaking with one of her colleagues the other night, who told me my sister-in-law won’t consider a part ready to play until she’s drilled through to the very truth of the piece. Her performances are always breathtaking because she shows the deep truth inside her characters.

As a writer, your job is to bring truth to your characters. Actors should play their lines from their heart rather than from their minds. Your job is to put that heart into the characters in the first place. Your characters must be in realistic circumstances, and must react reasonably.

The conflict to be resolved, by which your message is delivered, needs to be realistic as well Your characters need to make discoveries along the way, and their reactions need to be realistic.

Once you’ve written your piece, have members of each group read it with you. Listen carefully to their reactions. Then, pester ‘em with questions about the message, about how your characters react, about whether the piece has meaning for them or not. Their reactions will guide you in writing accurately.

Finally, Write with Love

Regardless of the message, people really do love one another. That love can be expressed with friendship, loving gestures, anger, hurting, even hatred. But, deep down, people really do have a genuine regard for one another. It’s why we don’t run over each other.

Your piece needs to reflect that regard, because that is truly how we behave. Even in a piece where the characters hate one another, it is that lack of regard that makes for honesty, and for good drama.

Regardless of the generation, a piece will have meaning if it centers on a realistic conflict, features realistic characters, and, most of all, reflects the love people have for one another.

Why Don't They Laugh?

There is a battle that rages in my head every now and again. It starts when a comedy I've carefully scripted and directed right to the cutting edge of brilliance goes "flop" and the audience misses it. On one side of the battle are the ne'er do wells of failure, ready to point out every possible mistake I could have made in directing the piece, every hackneyed joke, every moment where I might have been too cocky in my ability to pull off another hit. On the other side is the voice of reason, calm and gentle and preaching patience. I think this is God's voice.

When a comedy flops, it's a devastating shot to the gut of everyone involved in it. I would like to say it's never happened to me (and it hasn't as an actor), but directing a flop is one of those things that will happen to you eventually. When it does, do a postmortem to see what went wrong.

Sometimes audiences, especially church audiences, don't laugh out loud. While this usually happens in large houses when there isn't much audience, it can happen in a crowded house, too. Your first rule, after the flopped performance, should be to check with your house manager, your ushers, somebody who was in the house and could accurately gauge reaction. You may not have flopped at all, you may simply not have made them laugh out loud. But there may still be an issue.

A quiet audience in a comedy is a sign that your pacing is too brisk. They're holding their laughter in so that they won't miss anything. Don't forget that laughter comes in waves, and the waves get bigger if you give them time to build. Even though a piece is written joke-joke-joke, don't forget your rule of threes: little laugh, little laugh, BIG laugh, pause, and on to the next bit.
If the jokes are all stacked together you don't give the audience time to enjoy each one.

If your pacing is too slow, your comedy will flop on the other side. An audience may be enjoying the piece, but won't laugh out loud if the jokes are too widely spread. In that situation, the piece is no longer a comedy, but a drama with a couple of humorous moments.

We've found generational problems with some of our pieces. Our church does two services, one for the more traditional set, which tends to be older, and one for the progressive set, which tends to be younger. Pieces that just plain hit the older group flop in front of the youngsters and vice versa. It's a sad statement on the membership of churches, but we've found that pieces about community and teamwork flop in front of the younger set. Go to my website, www.reinharthouse.com, and click on the scripts page and take a look at I Fired My Boss. This piece was a huge hit with the progressives, but the traditionals were put off by it.

My comedies have flopped when my actors work too hard to make a joke. Audiences connect to real stories about real people. An actor that punches a joke too hard risks breaking the third wall and eliminating that sense of reality. The audience doesn't buy it, and doesn't laugh. If you directed your actors to do that, I highly recommend you cease doing that. If the actors did it in rehearsal, you're still at fault...not saying no means yes. If, however, the actor decided to mug his way through the performance on his own, you need to have a chat with him about teamwork.

There's a kind of blindness about what's funny that sets in when you work on a piece. Big time movies like Chicken Little and Shark Tales (you can tell I have a six year old at home) suffer from the same thing. In the case of Shark Tales, the movie is overall lackluster, and I didn't like it the first time through. But, as it is with little kids, I got to see the movie several times. Most of the scenes, when you go back and examine them, are absolutely hysterical. You can see why the producers of the film, who were all intimately involved in these hysterical parts of the film, would think that the overall film itself was great. It had to be...look at all these funny little parts! What gets missed, though, is an overall objective eye that makes sure that each piece makes sense. The movie didn't do very well in the box office...you might even say it flopped. The message for you? Get an objective eye to look at your piece before it plays...you might save yourself some grief!

Finally, unless your guys are booed of the stage, you didn't flop completely. The pieces we do all have a message in them. Regardless of whether we got laughs or not, the question is always the same...did we get the message through? Did the audience understand what we were trying to say?

Really, then, did we flop?

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.

Pause. Long silence.

Archie: So, what do you think?

Veronica: The plant’s dead.

Archie: I’m sorry?

Veronica: The plant you gave me. It’s dead.

Archie: Well, I’m sorry. I picked it up off my porch as I was rushing over here to see you. I guess I was wondering what you thought about what I said. (Long silence). So, what do you think?

Veronica: I was thinking about the plant.

Archie: Look, I understand the plant is dead. I’m sorry about the plant. Next time I’ll double check and make sure I bring you a live plant. What did you think about what I said?

Veronica: I was actually thinking about the plant. What did you say?

Archie: You didn’t hear me?

Veronica: I heard you. Something about an ocean, a lava flow, lungs being torn out, blah, blah, blah. But you left out the plant.

Archie: Well, I just can’t believe you care more about a dried up piece of fauna than you do about me! I can’t believe you put more focus on that stupid weed than you do on me!

When I wrote it, I saw Archie getting indignant about Veronica’s attitude. I saw it escalating into an argument. This would end up being a funny confrontation between the two lovers.

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

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.

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!