In the cast of Shadow Box we do have one young freshman boy who is playing the role of Steve. Admittedly it was a bit of a chore as a director to find some boy who in any way – – could possibly – – in some stretch of a squinted eye view – play the teenage son of a senior boy. Admittedly they are only 3 years apart in age, but I had give the ILLUSION that they could have a father/son relationship. Apart from their obvious lack of an age difference , I was not really sure how to go about auditioning the available freshman boys. How do you test this paternal connection? It certainly wasn’t going to be by reading sections of the script. The son just had too few lines to do an adequately cold rating. What to do?
In my world, a healthy father-son relationship was obvious in the way a father and son PLAYED with each other were able to rough house. Inspiration! I asked my stage mangers to place wresting mats on the floor and I began to pear of freshman boys with senior boys. The mission: a tickle war. AND the war worked. Just from the tickle war it was obvious what two boys had the most chemistry. It was impossible to watch them without smiling!
A family can never be labeled by what they SAY – it is only by what they do and how they treat each other. So true with a “theatre family.”
p.s. How to win a tickle war? Go for the ear. The ear works every time.
4 comments on “Tickle War”
OMG, this is another one of those inspirations that I could have used long ago.
The play director left me in charge of the rehearsal one day, and I was directing two junior college kids in a romantic comedy and guess what? The scene called for a kiss and neither one of them wanted to do it!
I guess I wasn’t thinking they would have any problem, since they were both grownups now, but I was completely wrong! We ended up using a hug, which turned out to be just fine in the show, as the audience was just juvenile as the cast and gave out a big woooooooooooo as the two embraced.
I did end up with one of the biggest achievements I ever had as a student director in that same show, getting the lead girl to scream onstage when she was this very shy, retiring type of girl. I just asked her questions until I realized that she was terrified of bugs, and invited her to imagine a huge bug crawling on her, which made her utter the most ear-splitting, authentic scream imaginable.
But the idea of a tickle fight, getting young actors to interact independently of the script – genius. 🙂
Haha, lovec the last sentence. Now I will knoe hod to become a winner 😀 And I really like how you think about family and that the actions ae more important than words.
Nicely done. As I was reading this I wondered how you could bring this out of two high school aged boys. It seems that your plan had worked and that is good work. It seems that you a really have a knack for teaching these classes!
I’m sure I’ve said this already, but you sound like a cool teacher.
I can appreciate out of the box thinking, and you totally display that.
Body language is, in my humble opinion, the epitome of acting. Anyone can read lines. Some people can express emotion – but chemistry and body language tend to be more difficult to fake.
I can only imagine what it must have been like to pair students up for a tickle war and see how this would play out.
It’s very unorthodox, but I can’t say I’m surprised that (in your company) it worked.
Very creative.