OCT
17

Five Keys to Comedy Acting

By Jim and Jane Jeffries 

Jim and Jane Jeffries began writing dinner theatre shows for the high school where they teach.  They have written six plays for Pioneer Drama Service. 

My wife and I have been writing and directing comedy plays for over twenty years.  What we really like about comedy is that you get instant feedback from the audience.  That is, you know immediately if you are reaching the audience by their laughter.  Similarly, you know immediately when you’re not reaching them by their silence.  Over the years, we’ve had far more laughter than silent moments, yet we’ve learned some lessons the hard way.  Based on what we’ve learned through the years, we’d like to share with you five keys to comedy acting.

1. You are on a team.  If someone tells you after a show that you were hilarious but the play itself wasn’t that funny, you’ve got a problem.  Your goal as an actor is to work with your fellow actors to create an experience that informs and delights the audience.  Once we had a performance where, just before an outdoor show, the lead actor went down with heatstroke.  They asked me to step in since they thought I would know his lines, having written the play and all.  I didn’t know the lines.  So I just improvised the entire show.  I got a lot of laughs, my fellow actors were in a constant state of terror, and the play lost all meaning.  Granted, this was a desperate situation, but when an actor goes off script for laughs at the expense of other actors, it never ends well.


2. Respect the script.  As playwrights, we are particularly sensitive about this.  Maybe you’ve got a great ad-lib that gets you great laughs...  for the moment.  But the playwright is building momentum for an arc resulting in a denouement that is both hilarious and satisfying.  An off-track gag for laughs can derail that momentum.  If your script does not have the humor you are looking for, then buy a different script.  Stay true to the script you’ve got.


3. Pacing.  One of my favorite movies of all time is His Girl Friday.  The pacing is crisp, and the repartee is quick without seeming to be rushed.  The shorthand that I use in rehearsals is a snapping of my fingers to get the pace going, which irritates my actors, but gets the message across.  In order to have this kind of delivery, the actors have to have their lines down cold.  We did this once with a spoof on Shakespeare in which the actors went back and forth on all the many, many, MANY ways that characters died in Shakespeare.  These two actors had to run their lines over and over again to get the crisp, quick pace.  But when they performed it, they brought the house down.  So, keeping the pace is important, BUT...


4. Do not step on the laughter.  Give the audience permission to laugh.  Actors tend to step on the laughter during the first performance because 1) they are anxious to deliver their lines right after their cue, 2) they have a conditioned fear of me snapping my fingers when they slow the pace, even during a performance, and 3) they didn’t have laughter during rehearsal, so they don’t expect it.  If you plow on to your next line during laughter, the audience will not laugh at the next bit because they are afraid that they will miss dialogue.  You are basically training your audience not to laugh.  Don’t be afraid to pause.  Even milk the laughter a bit with body language and facial expressions.
   
   You should start delivering lines again when the laughter dies down enough for the next line to be heard.  However, this is not a hard and fast rule.  I've had actors who had such great comic timing and feel for the audience that with a look or a gesture they were able to keep the audience in rolling laughter.  But you really cannot teach that.


5. The straight person is the most important actor in a comedy.  It can be a real bummer to be the straight person.  You are setting up the comic actor and — bam! — they deliver the line or action that gets the laughs.  Naturally, all actors want some glory.  But the straight person is the audience’s representative on stage.  They are the person the audience identifies with in all the craziness on stage.  You cannot have comedy without the straight person.

As actor Edmund Gwenn said on his deathbed, “Dying is easy.  Comedy is hard.”  It is so very hard to do comedy well, but the good news is, when you do it right, you get instant feedback from the audience.  Not only that, but studies in Japan and Norway have concluded that laughter helps people live longer, more stress-free lives.  So perform a public service.  Do some comedy acting!