Megan Grano studied improv at The Second City, the renowned Chicago comedy training ground, so she knows how to interact with audience members. Indeed, that interaction is a centerpiece of many of the pieces she and her colleagues perform at Second City.
However, there is nothing that prepared her for the drunks that surface, usually at the 11 p.m. Saturday night show. As she tells it, some of these audience members arrive intoxicated and become further inebriated over the course of the next few hours. One night, a drunk upchucked on the stage. "I had no preparation for that," she recalls. "I felt the best thing to do was make fun of that person. I said something like, 'Oh, perfect: The drunk puked all over the stage.' I don't think the drunk knew what was going on, but the audience laughed." The whole scene became even more bizarre and was in keeping with the evening's character when the stage manager quietly emerged, dropped to his knees with rag in hand and began wiping up the vomit.
Interacting with audiences is necessary on occasion, but unlike Grano, most actors are caught off-guard when they have to play directly to and with theatergoers. Their training does not include a course on breaking the fourth wall, and it's a loss, say the actors Back Stage spoke with. Consider the challenges encountered by some solo artists.
Los Angeles–based Rachel Bailit routinely interacts with her audience during her one-person piece, "Sugar Happens," maintaining that interaction forges a necessary bond between herself and her audiences. Not acknowledging them and their responses is in some ways distancing and dishonest, she suggests. "You become a bionic performer, aware of everything—someone yawning, checking a watch, those who come late, or leave early," she says. If she recognizes someone in the audience, she greets him; if latecomers arrive when she is wearing a bra and panties on stage, she may comment, depending on her mood and the tenor of the crowd, "It's not porn," or "Come on in, you're missing the best part."
"This summer I had an elderly couple [get] offended and leave," says Bailit. "I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry. It gets cleaner, but thank you for coming. Grab some candy on the way out.' You don't want to make people feel bad, but it's like the big elephant in the room and you have to address the truth. I view my performance as throwing a party and the audiences are the guests in my home. I have a responsibility to be there for those guests. If someone sneezes, I say, 'Bless you.' " The bottom line: Interaction with the audience defines the character of each performance, and it changes every night.
Breaking the fourth wall is easier for Bailit than for Tamara Hickey, who appeared in a particularly edgy production of "Cabaret" at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. In this instance, actors were called upon to interact with audiences before and during the show as well as throughout the intermission, says Hickey, who played Texas, one of the ensemble burlesque performers. "There is no preparation, and many actors in the cast found it difficult," she says. "Breaking the fourth wall doesn't come naturally." The fact that theatergoers were often intimidated by it didn't help. Part of the trick, says Hickey, is gauging who is open to the interaction and steering clear of those who really prefer to be left alone. "You get the vibes," she says. "I played a woman strung out on coke and [would] say in character, 'First time here?' and there were times when an audience member might respond as if I were not in character. One person started talking about an actor, using his real name, and I said I didn't know what he was talking about. Often, because of the blocking, we were interacting with the same person throughout the performance and our relationship would evolve. And of course that affects your whole performance. It's a great experience for actors to learn to stay in character. Of course, it was easier because I was playing a character so extreme, so removed from me as a person."
But what happens when you're in a play whose fourth wall is clearly intact? That requires a whole new set of skills that have never been taught. For Susyn Elise Duris, the key is remaining true to the spirit of the piece and the character you're playing. In a production of Noël Coward's "Easy Virtue," she recalls a particularly rough evening when actors were dropping lines all over the place, resulting in large uncomfortable gaps. Feeling compelled to do something, she entered the scene in character even though she was not in the scene. Still, she contends her actions in the made-up scene were in keeping with her character. "I was playing a guest in the house and I moved around the room, stealing things. And then turning to the audience, I held up my finger to my mouth." The improvised interlude, which lasted only a couple moments, gave the actors the necessary time to pull themselves together and get back on track.
The untoward event on stage or in the audience can never be fully anticipated, the actors agree. Still, Bailit, Hickey, and Duris all wish acting teachers had at least addressed these contingencies.
