There are times, even in the most serious of life’s events, that one wishes desperately that one had a blooper reel. A running tape of all of the insane accidents, funny mistakes, and crazy antics of life…or, in the case of an acting troupe, a remembrance on film of just how bizarre and hilarious rehearsals can end up being!

How I wish I had a blooper reel from last summer! What would be on it, you ask, if I had had a camera magically rolling at every ridiculous moment? Hmmm…at one point, if you were watching said blooper reel from Much Ado rehearsals of 2007, you would see a group of excited teenage boys, pulling their shoes off as they ran across the park to a tree where a big wasps’ nest had just been spotted. Then you would see shoes flying through the air at the nest, angry wasps coming out of the nest, and the same teenage boys running around saying, “That was AWESOME!” (Miraculously, no one was injured in the filming of this…oh, yeah, there was no filming…drat!)

You would also hear line after line after line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail being quoted, usually after I made the mistake of saying how much I would like more shrubberies on the set (”a nice one…not too expensive!”).  And probably not funny to me at the time, but would be funny later on a blooper reel, was when I dumped out a prop pitcher, full of what I thought was water onto our stage…only to discover that someone had poured root beer into the pitcher so that the actors could have a little treat during rehearsal.  I’m sure the look on my face was classic…just ask the students that got chewed out for it!

What made me think of a blooper reel was yesterday’s rehearsal of a couple of scenes in Act IV of Shrew. We were working on scene 3, where Katharina is begging Grumio to give her just a little something to eat, and Grumio is teasing Katharina and doing exactly what Petruchio would want him to do. Our Grumio asked if he could sit on the dining table, like the actor in the BBC version that we’ve been watching does, and I said sure. Our Katharina asked if she could then push Grumio off the table, so of course, I said yes! So Grumio is up there, giving Katharina a bad time, and when she gives her line - “Go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave…” - she shoves him off the table, he rolls and lands with a huge thud, and then Katharina can’t stop laughing…and neither could I!  Between Katharina, Baptista (who also couldn’t stop giggling) and the director, the rest of the rehearsal was pretty much just one big laugh-riot!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was beginning to wonder why these rehearsals were feeling so stale…so blah…and I was worrying that this wasn’t going to have the magic that last summer had. I asked a couple of my actors how I could improve the rehearsals, and they reminded me how much better it got once we started blocking and moving around on the stage, even if the lines weren’t down yet. I think they’re right - I think I spent too much time, trying to make us do book work at the table, when the magic that happens in a production happens on the stage. It’s the blooper-reel moments that bring these plays to life, and give the actors energy and enthusiasm to work with as they begin to understand their characters. Even though the book work has to be done for them to understand the text, it should be interspersed with moments on a stage, any stage (even if it’s just the parking lot outside of the school), moving around and getting to know themselves and the characters/actors they will be interacting with.

So, let the blooper-reel moments happen…get your actors off the page and onto a stage…try to keep them away from wasps’ nests, and do explain the importance of only having water on the stage (root beer + hot summer weather = more wasps building nests!!!!!)…Help them understand the text, but also help them understand how much fun this whole, crazy adventure in theatre can be!

Posted Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:29:06 and filed under Staging Shakespeare, Actors, Rehearsals, Schools, Film, The Taming of the Shrew, Education, Comedy, Theatre. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.