Talk To Me Now
Posted on | September 27, 2009 | No Comments
This time two years ago, I recall with some surprise, I had never been called upon – except for a three-night run as Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly back in high school – to talk directly to an audience on stage in close to 20 years of doing theatre. This is surprising because, save for my stint as a second-string George Tessman in the extension of Hedda Gabler at the Raven earlier this year, every show I have done since early 2008 has pointed me at the paying customers and asked me to hold their attention.
In Laughter on the 23rd Floor I was Lucas, Neil Simon’s stand-in, charged with getting us into and out of the McCarthy-era variety-show writers room, and holding together Simon’s somewhat kooky plot progression (the rest of the time I largely sat back and set up other people’s jokes with helpful questions like “What do you mean?”) Then came Trust, Steve Dietz’s mix tape of selfish and self-conscious young things doing unto one another, and Roy’s prop-laden lament over his inability to land a lady. Both set the stage for Touch, which opens with Kyle’s most-of-the-first-act monologue – recounting his meeting Zoe, their courtship and marriage, leading up to the night she disappeared, never to return – and returns to him throughout the show as he struggles to figure out what a life without her feels like. Paul Holmquist has divided the narratorial duties of Voice 1 and Voice 2 in Under Milk Wood (which closes in just a few hours) among the nine of us in the cast, which gives each of us a chance to step out from under the Welsh-accented characters we play throughout the show and speak (ostensibly) as someone closer to ourselves, taking the audience on a tour of Llareggub. And even in the upcoming The Man Who Was Thursday, Gabriel Syme takes a moment to cut through the ruse and repartee to try and explain who he is and how he arrived at his peculiar station.
A number of people have drawn what on the surface seems like and obvious and apt connection between the instances above and giving a monologue at an audition: after all, it’s just you on the stage, facing out, and giving your side of the story. But appearances are deceiving: whereas in direct address, you are pointedly making your case directly to the people, in an audition situation, you are more often than not doing your best to ignore the people in the room while simultaneously conjuring up a missing scene partner. Because most plays are about two people trying to get what they want out of one another, most monologues are simply one-half of that exchange – you are Romeo trying to get in the pants of a phantom Juliet. In direct address, the object of your desire is there in the room – they are the people in those seats.
That said, once you make that essential shift, the game is remarkably similar. Just like any other scene work, you have an objective: your goal is the sympathy, or goodwill, or understanding of the folks in the audience. You want them to take your side or see things your way.
My favorite part about direct address is that, done right, it is the trump card which separates a live theatre experience from film, the internet or TV. When you step out to talk to the audience, you are walking right through the Fourth Wall and rending the veil of passive observation modern audiences instinctively fall into. You are forcing them to reckon with you, your physical presence and proximity to them. “Yes,” you are saying, “I am here, in the room, with you. I can see and hear you, too. I can and will react to everything you do.”
In some ways, direct address is like the unlockable bonus content of achieving a certain facility as an actor. It’s very, very easy (often almost inevitable) to lose some of the immediacy throughout the rehearsals and run of a show – you know what’s going to happen, and there isn’t a lot you can do to change it. If you say a line slightly more forcibly, or mumble, or drop a line, or smile in a new place, the scene may have a different vibe, but your partners on stage are more-or-less on a track, and so are you – the plot is going to progress as it has to, and the scene will end as it has for the last however-many nights. Not so with these moments of audience interaction: the audience doesn’t have a script: they don’t have to buy your explanation of events, or even listen to you. You have to work, really feel them out, really look at them to make sure you are getting what you want out of them.
This instant feedback is, of course, a double-edged sword. When it works, I will admit – you feel like King Shit. But when it doesn’t work, there you are, just a dude in front of a bunch of people, in clothes that aren’t yours, trying to convince a bunch of people that a story is true when you both no it isn’t. You find yourself desperately wanting that Fourth Wall back as a protection against eye-rolls, shifting feet, restless leg twitching, text-messaging, program reading or (as happened to me last night at Under Milk Wood) some guy who has something unbearably urgent and apparently hilarious to say to his girlfriend just as you are looking at him and talking about pigs having sex. (Dear Guy: I am 15 feet from you, you are wearing a bright green shirt and I am looking at you – holding the program up to your mouth as you loom over your disproportionately petite companion and whisper your surely-spot-on observational humor does neither of us any favors.)
I remember rehearsing for Laughter and doing my best to avoid any occupied seats when, as Lucas, I talked about getting my big break on The Max Prince Show. During our first previews, I trained myself to unfocus my eyes, so that the audience was just a wash of color rather than dozens of people looking to me for an explanation of why the hell we were all here. But there was a moment, when I let loose a joke that I determined wasn’t very funny and got no response, that I just accepted – there on stage, in the moment – that the joke wasn’t funny. I must have shrugged, or my face fell, or something, and the house erupted into laughter. Suddenly, I realized the pact that you create when you talk with the audience – you have to get on the same page. You have to convince the audience that you are a reliable arbiter between their world and the world of the play, which sometimes means you have to give up control of the situation – maybe you aren’t the most sympathetic one tonight, maybe that bit you love fell on its face this afternoon. You let that go, and you’re off to the races.
Buy me a beer?Tags: Laughter on the 23rd Floor > The Man Who Was Thursday > Touch > Trust > Under Milk Wood
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