We’re getting down to crunch time now and I, for one, can’t wait for an audience. We have three more rehearsals before we open. Monday and Tuesday will be the full dress and tech and Wednesday we will have an invited audience to give us a feel for the audience response.
The one thing that you cannot rehearse is the most important part of live theatre -- audience reaction. Knock Knock is a smart comedy. People will laugh. But when?
What will bring belly laughs at one performance will bring a polite giggle or dead silence at another. If you anticipate a laugh, chances are you won’t get one. You can’t let it throw you. Sometimes you’ll get a laugh at something you don’t even think was funny. That’s part of it too.
There’s a phrase – “play the laugh”. In performance when the audience laughs you have to be able to wait – just long enough -- but not too long – for the audience to have that moment. That’s what they paid their money for. Laughter has its own wave. It builds, it crests and then it descends. To make the most of the experience, the actor has to pause long enough to let the audience enjoy the moment and then start again as the wave dissolves. There is no formula for dealing with it. It’s all feel. If a laugh begins and you don't allow time for it, you can actually train an audience to not laugh. Not what you want when you're doing a comedy.
There are two moments in theatre that are precious. Getting laughter is a wonderful feeling. A fantastic adrenalin rush. All the hard work you’ve done in the previous weeks or months has paid off.
The other and most powerful moment is silence. Not “the audience is dead” silence. It’s that moment, that does not always come, when the audience is with you completely and you know that they’re with you in rapt attention. In that moment, there’s not a cough, a rustle of movement, nothing. No sound but the ferocious energy of silence. Sweet.
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