A brief post on acting
Or, when to drop the sandwich.
This was kind of a fun revelation to me during the run of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". I realized something wasn't quite working with the audience, tried something different, and it worked!
The setup: Early on in the play, Charlie Brown has a monologue where he comes out with his lunch bag, complains some, takes out his sandwich, then notices the little red-headed girl (LRHG), and angsts about that a while. During most of the practices, I was just miming the sandwich, but at the last minute, we went ahead and added a real sandwich.
Once I actually had the sandwich in my hand and was running through the monologue, I realized it could be funny to actually drop the sandwich at the moment when I froze and saw the LHRG. So I did, and my fellow cast members thought it was hilarious, so I kept it. The moment went something like this:
CB (wrapping up end of previous dialogue): "Boy, the PTA sure did a good job of painting these benches."
[raises sandwich to take another bite, eyes wander to LRHG spot, freeze; beat.]
[drop sandwich; beat]
"There's that little red-headed girl."
On Friday, I got a mild laugh from the audience at the beat after dropping the sandwich. On Saturday, though, I got nothing. Now, this could have been any number of things--different audiences respond to different lines very differently from one another, and it can be really hard to tell what's going on. But driving home on Saturday, I had a sudden flash of inspiration.
The *cast* knew 'where' the LRHG was, since I had practiced it several times by then. They also knew what was coming. So when I dropped the sandwich, they knew why--I had just seen her, and was frozen in fear/anticipation/angst.
But the *audience* didn't know that. This was the very first scene after the opening number, and the LRHG hadn't been established yet. So the Friday audience was laughing at the sheer slapstick--it's funny to see someone drop food on the floor. But slapstick isn't very powerful, and the Saturday audience didn't respond.
So for Sunday, I swapped the order around:
CB [raises sandwich to take another bite, eyes wander to LRHG spot, freeze; beat.]
"There's that little red-headed girl."
[drop sandwich; beat]
*Big* laugh. It worked! Now the audience knew what was at stake! The slapstick was still goofy, but now it reinforced the moment instead of coming out of nowhere. A little kid, seeing a girl he likes, gets so flustered that he drops his sandwich on the ground.
These are the sorts of moments I love about acting.
This was kind of a fun revelation to me during the run of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". I realized something wasn't quite working with the audience, tried something different, and it worked!
The setup: Early on in the play, Charlie Brown has a monologue where he comes out with his lunch bag, complains some, takes out his sandwich, then notices the little red-headed girl (LRHG), and angsts about that a while. During most of the practices, I was just miming the sandwich, but at the last minute, we went ahead and added a real sandwich.
Once I actually had the sandwich in my hand and was running through the monologue, I realized it could be funny to actually drop the sandwich at the moment when I froze and saw the LHRG. So I did, and my fellow cast members thought it was hilarious, so I kept it. The moment went something like this:
CB (wrapping up end of previous dialogue): "Boy, the PTA sure did a good job of painting these benches."
[raises sandwich to take another bite, eyes wander to LRHG spot, freeze; beat.]
[drop sandwich; beat]
"There's that little red-headed girl."
On Friday, I got a mild laugh from the audience at the beat after dropping the sandwich. On Saturday, though, I got nothing. Now, this could have been any number of things--different audiences respond to different lines very differently from one another, and it can be really hard to tell what's going on. But driving home on Saturday, I had a sudden flash of inspiration.
The *cast* knew 'where' the LRHG was, since I had practiced it several times by then. They also knew what was coming. So when I dropped the sandwich, they knew why--I had just seen her, and was frozen in fear/anticipation/angst.
But the *audience* didn't know that. This was the very first scene after the opening number, and the LRHG hadn't been established yet. So the Friday audience was laughing at the sheer slapstick--it's funny to see someone drop food on the floor. But slapstick isn't very powerful, and the Saturday audience didn't respond.
So for Sunday, I swapped the order around:
CB [raises sandwich to take another bite, eyes wander to LRHG spot, freeze; beat.]
"There's that little red-headed girl."
[drop sandwich; beat]
*Big* laugh. It worked! Now the audience knew what was at stake! The slapstick was still goofy, but now it reinforced the moment instead of coming out of nowhere. A little kid, seeing a girl he likes, gets so flustered that he drops his sandwich on the ground.
These are the sorts of moments I love about acting.