Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Reacting and Reactions

* This blog includes some stills from the film Ghost Town.

Ghost Town stars the lovable, hate-able, hysterical Ricky Gervais. Gervais is best known for his single camera comedies The Office (the original BBC version) and Extras. As in Gervais’ performances, many actors make comedy seem effortless, but it is one of the most precise, detail oriented and unforgiving styles of acting. Comedic acting takes into account many things: timing, hitting the joke, physicality, characterization, to list a few. Of course we have to give credit to the writers for creating comedic scripts, because without funny lines we wouldn’t have funny actors. But one of the most important aspects of comedy is often easily overlooked because it is not necessarily written into the script. And that aspect of comedy is REACTING. Of course all styles of acting are about listening as much as they are about delivering the lines, but in comedy our reactions often act as a final punch line or even the joke itself. For example, take a look at the comedy of actor Rowan Atkinson. The entire premise the show Mr. Bean is Atkinson’s crazy comic reactions. Mr. Bean often doesn’t have any lines at all! Gervais is also an exceptional reactor. And we certainly see proof of this in his role as the sour, snippy dentist Bertram Pincus D.D.S. in Ghost Town. In this case I think pictures might speak more to the point than words. Take a look at these:



As we can see in these stills from Ghost Town, Gervais excels at unique, uninhibited, quirky, funny reactions. And, as I am sure you can guess, his reactions add tremendously to the comedy of the film. But looking at these stills out of context doesn't address one important fact: simply making funny faces is not reacting. Making funny facial expressions for the sake of it isn't a good idea, and often when actors do this they comes across as over acting. The reactions have to be in response to something and they have to be true to the character. In Ghost Town, the character Dr. Bertram Pincus definitely would sneer, scowl, snort, snip, scoff, mock, humph, guffaw and occasionally smile. So as we see in the film, Gervias isn't just over acting, he's reacting. And that's why this comedy is definitely something to laugh about! What do you think of Ricky Gervais? Let us know in the poll to the right. For more info on Elisa Eliot and Elisa Eliot's Acting Studio please visit www.elisaeliot.com.

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