The weather was painfully hot–over 100 degrees. The thermometer began to drop but I could see storm clouds up ahead. I always imagined them as enormous battleships in the sky–so tranquil-seeming from a distance, but threatening to behold.
I was on my way to Monticello, IL, for an ACTING WORKSHOP! We launched these workshops this year, and they are fast becoming a favorite with kids and grown-ups alike. The back of my car was filled with simple costumes and props–hats for cowboys, fancy folk, and chickens alike, along with eyepatches and fake mustaches.
Beginning the Workshop: The Funniest Line you Can Think Of
I think of the acting workshops as growing out of our poetry workshops. With poetry we explore the music of words, creating unique poems and sentences as we explore ways to add emotional expression with our voice. Acting takes this spontaneity, this expressiveness, and adds movement and dialogue, extending the power of imagination to encompass a whole scene.
I arrived at the Allerton Public Library about an hour before the workshop started. Chairs were already set up facing the front of the room, with no tables. The set-up for the acting workshop is simpler than for comics or poetry–I set up my banner and rug, with the rug acting as a kind of stage. Then I put the hats and other props on a table off to one side. Then I tore up copier paper to make smaller slips of paper, and pencils to give to kids as they walked in.
Kids and parents began to arrive. I gave them the slips of paper and told them to write down the funniest thing they could think of. Then I put these slips of paper in a hat, and said that we were going to pick out a sentence at random and read it, using our voices and our bodies to add expression and WACKINESS to it.
Being a Good Audience
Soon the top hat I used for funny lines was full, and it was time to begin the workshop. I started by asking them what acting was–they quickly hit on the idea of using IMAGINATION to create a scene for both the actor and the audience. Then I told them what good audiences do. A good audience
- Sits in their seats
- Listens to the person on stage
- Claps when the person on stage is done.
Especially in live theater, the relationship between the actor and the audience is key to the acting process. Especially with kids who haven’t performed before, and may have to fight off jitters and reluctance, having a supportive audience is important.
Then I demonstrated how I wanted them to say their lines. First, you take your funny line, and any props you want to use. Then you step backstage–just behind and to the side of the banner–and you take a DEEEEEEEEP breath. In and out through your nose. Then you read your line to yourself, and practice saying it in your head or maybe under your breath. Then you STEP onto the stage (my rug), you look at the audience, and you say your line. I looked them all in the eye and said:
POOP!
Especially with an audience of younger kids, a line like this was inevitable. The kids and grown-ups giggled. Then the kids came up to say funny lines they got out of a hat. One little kid needed his mom’s help to read it, but each one of them delivered their line with panache and, once they got used to the exercise, confidence.
More Acting: Monologues and Dialogues
After that, we did our SUPERVILLAIN MONOLOGUES. Jerry came up with this idea, an excuse to employ eyepatches and mustaches, as well as to get kids to say what they wrote rather than picking something at random. Soon we had kids in cowboy hats, top hats, and the top of a chicken costume Jerry’s mom had in her basement–all saying crazy lines about their plans for world domination. Maniacal laughter rang through the room.
Afterward, we did some dialogues. I demonstrated with the help of the library director by taking my supervillain monologue (where I used a doomsday device to turn everyone into bananas) with her as a superhero responding (pointing out that if everyone was bananas there’d be no one to terrorize). It wasn’t necessary to use a superhero or supervillain theme, and the kids formed small groups and made their own scenes. In one, two girls became friends. Another dialogue involved two girls, one little boy, and their mom, all acting out their parts onstage.
Two little girls in the back seemed especially nervous, and said they didn’t want to act something out. I suggested that they use some of the animal masks and pretend to be animals. One girl wanted to be a cat. I asked the other what animal she’d gotten as a sticker. She said octopus. I asked her what kind of sound she thought an octopus might make. Octopuses have beaks, like birds. So maybe an Octopus would go TWEET like a bird? The little girl giggled. When their turn to perform came on, one girl went MEOW and the other went tweet. Her mom asked each girl what animal she was. “A cat!” said one girl. “An Octopus” said the other, and the audience laughed.
Two boys who’d said funny lines at the beginning, meanwhile, were content to draw on their slips of paper. With acting even more than other workshops, it’s important to gently coax kids into participating, but ultimately to let them participate at their level of comfort. The kids who embrace the exercise, however, usually have fun engaging in lightly-structured play, and the workshop ended with the kids chanting along with me:
When I say DO you say ART! DO!
ART!
DO!
ART!
