Performing Comedy Using the Meisner Technique, Part II: Same, But Different

I took my first Meisner class in the fall of 2015 and I was almost instantly hooked. Its improvisational nature and permission to simply *be* gave my classically-trained perfectionist self so much freedom that I couldn’t wait to start applying it to performances.

In the spring of 2016, I took a more advanced 8-week Meisner class and felt ready to take on the world. My first performance amidst the advanced class was playing Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Having grown up watching The Little Rascals episodes allowed me to feel the show’s vaudevillian nature in my bones. The rhythmic comedy and bubbling pitches of the lines made so much sense to me and I wondered what would happen to my newfound freeing Meisner tools if I leaned into Millie’s shtick-y structure.

I asked my beloved teacher Terry Martin.

The Watertower Theatre, home of my first Meisner class

“How can I honor the rhythm of the show, which feels like it needs to be the same every time to fit the time period, and maintain all of the impulsive, uncontrolled work that we’ve done?” I inquired one day after class.

Terry, a musical theatre performer for years, had the answer immediately.

“You have to think of the comedic timing and the rhythm of the piece as choreography,” he explained.

“You can keep being impulsive within the parameters of how the lines need to be said stylistically. You don’t need to sacrifice play for structure or vice versa. You just need to think of your Meisner work as now coloring within the stylistic lines of the show.”

I chewed on this as Terry went on.

“You know the snippy, wise-cracking way that these lines need to be said for the show to remain in the world of its time period,” he elaborated. “Use that as a dancer would choreography. Stay within those pre-planned parameters, but let your interpretation of how you move within them vary from performance to performance.”

Thoroughly Modern Millie

Terry’s advice was exactly what I needed to hear to start bringing the Meisner technique into my first hefty role since studying it. Throughout the run, I was able to deliver the lines within the meter of Millie, doing its 1920s time period justice, all while working off of the moment. I never set how I assumed something would hit me or planned how I “should” feel. That improvisatory mindset allowed for the cigar-in-mouth line delivery that the musical’s time period called for while also allowing me to stay fresh and discover new moments in every performance.

This leads me into my second tenant of performing comedy while using the Meisner technique:

Live within the comedic parameters and let it be different every time.

Now, this is a tough concept to put into words and I’ve been mulling over how to phrase it for weeks. Here’s what I know: solid comedic timing that still stays on its toes is done by a performer who is acutely aware of:

1. The shape of the comedy

2. Their relationship to the audience

Let’s break this down.

When I say “the shape of the comedy,” I’m referring to the "language" that the comedy is written in. If you’re doing a scene from The Office and delivering it like you’re in My Fair Lady, you’re not translating the text from its mother tongue. The way I understood the lines from Thoroughly Modern Millie and Bestie Island (the dark comedy that I did this fall and around which this series is written) was vastly different.

Thoroughly Modern Millie was filled with:

1. Speedy set ups and punch lines, often interrupted to be even more clipped

   • Example:

     MISS DOROTHY: Where will you find him?

     MILLIE: The classifieds. I've been interviewing boss after boss, but so far, married, married, engaged, married, single-and-I-can-see-why…

     MISS DOROTHY: Don't you read the tabloids?

2. Phrases that turned common euphemisms on their heads 

   • Example:

     MILLIE: And who are you, the un-welcome wagon?”

3. Silly, snappy moments of irony:

   • Example:

     MR. GRAYDON: Absolutely. Isn't this the land of opportunity, Miss Dillmount, a place where the right combination of aptitude and enthusiasm can take a girl from nowhere straight to the top? So let's do this the American way: (Removing his jacket.) Bolt the door, take off your things, let's have a taste.

     MILLIE: Excuse me?

     MR. GRAYDON: Take a letter. 

Even if I’d never experienced the comedic language of the show's slapstick style, I bet that I’d be able to pick out that these lines are calling for:

1. To honor the speedy set-ups and punchlines: specific lilts in vocalization to surprise the audience

You’ve likely heard before that a moment is funny when it’s unexpected. Audiences have been primed to laugh when they hear certain rhythms and cadences because of this, even if they might not get the joke right away. I can almost picture a key being turned in a lock when I think of it. It happens when it appears that you’re taking the audience down a path that they know well but at the last second, turn them in a direction they didn’t see coming. You could try this in a low-stakes social situation the next time you’re telling a funny story and see if you get laughs: often if you say the turning point in a line or story with a different  inflection, people will laugh, even if what you were saying wasn’t that funny. The equation is basically, “same, same, DIFFERENT.”

Breaking this down into the aforementioned Thoroughly Modern Millie line:

2. To support the common euphemisms being turned on their heads, I might play with precise enunciation and gestures

While we certainly don’t want to assume that an audience is stupid, clarity is a virtue in this work, especially in subtle doses. If we just bulldoze over, “And who are you, the un-welcome-wagon?” it has the potential to lose its well-deserved moment of cleverness. By adding the tiniest clarifying element to your speech or movement, you can include the audience and set them up for more enjoyment of the line.

For example, with this line, one could try:

• For a clarifier in speech, picking a stock way of saying the line, for example, with the air of “Okay, Mr. High-and-Mighty” or “Who asked you?” - two line reads that I’d be willing to bet that many of us would be able to agree upon the “textbook” inflection of that. By picking a stock way of saying this line, you help to bring out the cleverness of the unexpected “un-welcome wagon” by presenting the audience with the inflection of saying a line like this that they know well.

• For a clarifier in the body, you might try a similar thing as the stock way of saying the line: finding a stock way of presenting it physically that you might see in a cartoon or an industrial training video. For example, if you’re trying on saying this line with “Who asked you?” energy, you might add a clarifier physically of something as simple as having your hands on your hips. If you’re playing with saying it with “Okay, Mr. High-and-Mighty,” you could clarify with arms crossed.

These also could be too pre-planned for you! Just know that it can be interesting to play with specificity of gesture and inflection, especially in a period piece, to make sure that the comedy stands out without beating the audience over the head with it.

3. To address the snappy moments of irony, I read into the musical needing a quick pace.

Intelligent, quick moments like this (the joke being that Millie thought Mr. Graydon wanted to be romantic when really he just wanted her to practice dictation) deserve pacing as quick as their witty writing. In addition to being notably specific with how you’re delivering a witty line, not giving a lot of space before or within it can be important to allow the pace to clip along without the audience feeling dragged. Note that I said “before or within” the line - allowing for space after the line to honor any appreciation or processing time that the audience might need is often necessary.

In Bestie Island this fall, after reading the script, I found that the show was filled with:

1. Subtle and specific references to reality TV moments

2. Dark undertones with a surface-level facade

3. Most characters being so self-absorbed that they were missing murders happening right under their noses

Therefore, I felt that the shape of the comedy called for:

1. Like Millie, pin-pointedly precise gestures and inflections to cue the audience into what we were referencing

2. Stark shifts between the moments that were surface-level and light versus dark and deep

3. Vapid dryness

These are the starting points to the first crucial step of excavating the comedy’s shape. The next step is something that I see performers miss frequently but that is vastly important: remaining aware of their relationship with the audience.

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Once you’ve worked out even generally what works within your comedic parameters, it’s time to open up your craft to be in a conversation with the audience. The difficult part about this is that it requires you to remain improvisatory, even though you might’ve found the planned “choreography” that you’re going to use for specific bits. It can be so tempting to just bulldoze through a show, trusting that the audience will get it and that you don’t need to do more than what you’ve been rehearsing.

However, we do need to do a bit more once an audience is present. The “more” that is required of us is to sense:

what they’re enjoying,

what they’re wanting to move on from,

and what they might need more time to really let sink in.

To me, this skill is less about equations that work every time like  “If you can feel tension, they want to move on” or “If you hear one person laugh, wait for more people to laugh.” It’s more about energy that the audience can feel that they’re being included in what happens next.

Photo by Andrew Brodhead

I went to a church service recently in which the vocal soloist leading the majority of the service seemed distant and focused only on themselves. Of course, it was a church service, on which there are varying opinions about how much performance should be involved anyway but regardless, it felt to me like I was not being included energetically by the soloist or in a symbiotic relationship with the music that was being made. I drifted mentally and felt disengaged. I noticed that in a moment far into the service, the soloist seemed to finally check in with the congregation but quickly went back to disconnecting. I’d imagine that the soloist was discouraged by how little we seemed to be “with” them or engaged in the music once they finally looked included us in their sphere of awareness.

Photo by Valerie Terranova, New York Theatre Guide

Contrastingly, I went to see Beau the musical in New York City for the second time. Like the nature of performing music in a church, it’s worth noting that this musical inherently includes the audience at a higher level than most live performances do. However, the difference of how I felt between these two recent experiences in the church at Beau feels particularly pertinent to this point about letting your audience in.

From the moment that Beau started, I sensed that how I reacted would impact the energy of the show and its performers. The actors had set lines and staging, yes, but were also willing to shift rhythms, nuances, and feelings based on what they were getting from those of us watching them from the dim lights.

How I felt as a witness to the singers in both of these instances could have been total conjecture. But if we’re to call spirituality into this, I feel confident that spiritually, we can feel the difference as audiences between when our energy is being taken into consideration in a performance and when it’s being cut off at the lip of the stage. For a performer, opening up your energetic field to include what you’re feeling from an audience can be terrifying. As a comedic performer, it’s vital that you do.

Photo by Max Pearlman Photography

In Bestie Island, I had my bits carved out (some of which are referenced in Part I of this series) and felt fairly confident with what worked and what didn’t as far as my delivery. However, each performance, I took care in inviting in what I was getting from the audience to influence how I said my lines and how much time I spent on a comedic moment.

Even in group numbers, I knew that a lot of what we were doing was funny and would hit. However, I left my response to how and what would hit up to the audience and felt surprised every time, which I firmly believe that the audience feels and appreciates. It’s almost as if, from the beginning, we have to prepare our audiences that what they do is going to influence us and that their reactions are just as much a part of what happens in the moment as what is scripted and planned.

So there you have it, the second parameter of infusing the Meisner technique into comedic acting: live within the comedy’s structure while allowing for how you live in it to be different every time. Easier said than done, but hopefully a little clearer after reading this.