Former Sound of Young America co-host Jordan Morris, Boy Detective, works in television production. I was chatting with him once about a show he was working on, and there was something he couldn’t get over… the show was a sitcom, but a fair number of the actors couldn’t say their jokes right. They said them wrong, over and over, take after take.
There’s a right way to say a joke, and a wrong way. Jokes have a rhythm, and you have to “punch” the punchline. Being able to master this is the bedrock of being funny on stage or screen. Some people joke a lot in their lives, and they already know how. Other people have to learn. Obviously, these actors had never bothered to learn this most basic of skills. Outrageous!
Except for this: what do we expect?
Most succesful actors, especially the ones who aren’t really, really beautiful, are very well trained. People go the Yale School of Drama, or to the Neighborhood Playhouse, or Julliard. They get BFAs and MFAs and sometimes even PhDs. But it’s entirely possible to go to theater school for four years, or even six, and never take a class which seriously covers comic acting. The closest they’ll come to comedy in anything that isn’t self-selected is David Mamet. Or maybe Twelfth Night. Possibly a production of The Music Man. Maaaaaybe an improv class in which they are warned again and again not to try to be funny. Other than that, they’re on their own — maybe they’ve got it, maybe they don’t.
That’s the system, and because of it, we have a nation of actors who can find the emotional truth of a cereal box, but can’t do a spit take to save their lives.
When you’re in acting school (and I did theater in college and went to a very well respect arts high school, where I studied theater three hours a day for four years), what you’re learning is about finding and representing the truth of a character. What’s often called “method” acting is very internally oriented — you are finding some essential quality in yourself. Of course, comedy is almost completely externally oriented — you’re getting laughs from the audience. And because of this apparent philosophical contradiction — acting for the audiences benefit is so 19th century — it doesn’t get taught.
And there are most certainly comic acting techniques that can be taught. I was lucky enough to work with Jeff Raz, a professional clown and Commedia Dell’arte teacher and performer, and as much as I hated clowning, I was shocked at how techniques I learned were directly applicable to the getting of laughs. It turns out that the funnyness that some people have naturally has been refined for hundreds of years by comic performers who weren’t against training. Even the most unfunny folks in my class could learn ways to use their bodies and voices to get a laugh on stage. I don’t say this to diminish clowning, either… just to illustrate that technique works.
Of course, the nation is covered in improv schools, many of which are great. These schools are where most of our great comic actors come from — Bill Murray, for example. But they’re teaching improv, not comic acting. They’re two complimentary but ultimately seperate skills. I’d say that most of the comedic acting skills learned at improv schools come the hard way — from trial and error in hundreds of performances in front of audiences. These skills often have holes, though. When I see even great sketch shows at the UCB or a similar theater, I’m often dissapointed by the acting on display.
And where else do our comic performers come from? Standup, were we often get the total non-acting of folks like George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, who’ve also honed their comic chops in front of tough crowds — though these guys have also each honed a single comic persona that compliments their material, a persona that’s tough to break out of in other media. One day I’ll learn to stop going to see Chris Rock movies.
It’s all a function, I think, of the fact that our culture can’t seem to take comedy seriously. More on this soon…