Knock Knock - A week away

One week from today we open.  The actors are ready.  The set has been built and is incredible.  The set decoration is outstanding.  Dedicated volunteers are manning the box office daily and people are calling in an reserving tickets.

As with all shows the technical aspects come in later and they are always a concern.  There’s a team of people working to make sure everything works.  They are spending hours every day working on them.  It would seem, to the average person, that you could set something once and it would work every time.  This is, after all, the 21st cenury.  But for some reason that law of physics does not apply in a theater.

It’s inexplicable but consistently inconsistent.   I’m convinced if you drove a brand new car into a theater and put it on stage, it would only start 7 out of 10 times.  Put people in the audience to watch the car start and the percentage goes down to 50-50. The gods of theater are thousands of years old and I don't think they like technology.

A couple of years ago I directed Grace & Glory for TLT.  In the script it called for smoke to start pouring out of a wood stove.  I spent 2 weeks trying to make it work.  I finally came to the conclusion that three things could happen  and two of them were bad.  1) It could work perfectly  2) It wouldn't work at all and we stand there with egg on our faces  3) It works too well and the smoke drives the audience out of the theater.  We cut the bit.

On stage in The Odd Couple years ago, I once answered a phone that was ringing.  I picked up the phone, said hello, and it rang again.  What can you do?  You play it for a laugh and keep going.  In Camelot, I was involved in a dramatic moment and the backdrop behind me was supposed to fly up and reveal the set for the next scene.  The moment came and the backdrop went down instead of up.  You hate to hear laughter when you're not trying to be funny.

I saw a production of The Mousetrap years ago.  At the end of Act 1 with a single actress on stage, a hand was to reach around the corner of the set and hit the light switch.  The plan was for the set to go completely dark, there would be a scream and then the lights would come back up revealing  the actress dead in the middle of the stage.

On the night in question however, when the hand reached around and hit the switch, the lights dimmed.  They did not go out. The audience could still see everything on stage.  Well, the killer could not go on stage and ruin the last two acts of Agatha Christie's classic.  The actress on stage became very flustered and the result was that she screamed and then proceeded to strangle herself to death in the middle of the set. 

In that moment it became the only comedy that Agatha ever wrote.

Live theater is an in-the-moment experience.  Every performance is unique and different for a variety of reasons.  The actor is a human being and the status of every human being is at best “day to day”.  Technical things are completely out of an actor’s control so you just have to have a blind belief bording on faith that things will work but still anticipate what you as an actor will do if it doesn’t.

The biggest variable in any performance is the audience.  If you’re doing a comedy for instance, for a small audience, it’s typical that no one wants to be the one to start laughing.  What you get then is an audience of smilers.  They may be enjoying the show thoroughly and they’re smiling as loud as they can but, in a comedy as an actor, the last thing you want is quiet. Larger audiences tend to feel more comfortable laughing as part of larger group.

Actors feed on an audience’s energy.  Good or bad.  Actors must be salesmen.  In the first few minutes they have to grab the audience’s attention and bring them into the story they’re trying to tell.  When the audience is energetic and receptive, magic can happen.   If not, it can be a long day at the office.