We recently just finished our Marco Island Charter Middle School production of The Princesses and the Pea and it was met with thunderous applause and laughter throughout the entire show. We received so many great reviews from the audience; however, I’m going to focus on one mention in particular that the audience noticed: Always Being in the Moment. What does this mean? It means to constantly interact in the scene no matter if you have a line or not. One thing that drives me crazy as a director is when actors are in a scene, but not listening or interacting with the action. The actor becomes a zombie with no expression and no movement. It is guaranteed to take away from the scene if an actor is staring into space as if they don’t belong. At that point, the actor may as well be playing a tree, because there is no contribution to the story other than awkwardness.
In The Princess and the Pea, we had a scene where the princesses adjourned to a fruit punch table after their introduction to the court and The Prince. The key for these wonderful ladies was to stay engaged in social conversation, while each new princess entered the ballroom. To do this, I asked the ladies to perform the following:
- Keep in conversation; however, you can’t be heard. I wanted to see lips flapping without a sound.
- Keep conversations and movements specific to your character. For example, one princess was named Princess Ramble and she was not allowed to stop talking at any time–not even to take a sip of punch! Her goal was to move from princess to princess and to make the ladies uncomfortable with her constant rambling to the point they wanted to escape from Ramble’s constant chatter.
- Keep a sharp listening ear to the spoken lines. At times, character names were mentioned and certain princesses were drawn back into the scene for brief moments.
- Don’t upstage the scene by drawing the audience away from the actors that are speaking.
If you think this is easy, it is not. Stay in the moment without drawing attention to yourself? Really? Yes, really!
Aside from lots and lots of practice, we develop this acting skill by showing them what it looks like when all the actors are engaged in the scene and others are not. When they see this looking from the outside as if they are in the audience, they find it quite comical and can distinguish the difference between being involved on stage and not. One of the exercises we do is to build on a scene. Here’s how it works:
- Create a space, for example, a park. Start with one actor sitting on a bench performing an action, such as reading a paper.
- Send in the next actor to create a movement, such as training their dog. As they are playing with their dog, the original actor must continue to read the paper and react.
- I may send in a group of two or three and they must engage in an activity such as setting up a picnic, eating, and so forth.
- The action continues until your entire group is engaged in some sort of joined activity at the park.
- Here is the trick: aside from the first actor, they all must come up with what activity they wish to engage in.
- After some time, I call “Freeze!” and guess what they are participating in.
- The last part, which they love (or hate) is my analysis of their improvisation. Were they engaged the entire time? Was it convincing? And of course, I always pick the winner based on who caught my attention most.
After this past performance, I prided myself and my actors on always being in the moment. The best part is when the audience noticed and couldn’t believe how these actors were so engaged in each moment at such a young age! That’s what makes your show WHOLE! That’s when you know every actor is a star and gave 100% effort to their performance. I can’t tell you how proud I was of this achievement and can end by saying there is so much more to come from this group of actors!
Congratulations to the MICMS Cast of “The Princesses and the Pea!”
