As most of you may know, churches around the nation participate in holding a most wonderful children's event: Vacation Bible School. It's a program that consists of skits, lessons, songs and other various activities aimed at attracting children in order to witness to them. One key part of that is the skit. Sometimes it features heavily, other times not at all. At my church, it occurs right before the children split into their age groups for the rest of the activities. Here, the skit plays an important role in the overall VBS and the message.
Originally, I was not going to participate, due to all necessary positions being filled. However, I was later brought on as a minor character - a court magician. (Oh, for clarification: our skit was Moses-leading-the-people-out-of-Egypt themed, so I was Pharaoh's magician.) As was usual with our VBS, it was largely improvised on the spot. Initially, I had mixed feelings. Erskine had an improv group with whom I had rehearsed, but never performed. However, there was a rough outline, and words were to be shown on a screen. Despite this, most of the other characters (notably Moses and Aaron) were completely ad-lib for most of their lines.
This brings up one issue with VBS skits: there is almost no time to familiarize to the character. Understandably, the actors are quite busy with jobs, children and other matters, so extensive rehearsal time is not manageable. Thus, improvised comedy is the best solution. The skit was split, in a manner of speaking, between the comic side of Pharaoh, his servant, magician, and a random Hebrew on one side, and the serious side of Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron on the other. Our comedic leads had strong personalities, so improvising humorous interactions seemed fairly easy for them. I was later informed that my character seemed to be played more straight, to counter the over-the-top humor between Pharaoh and his servant.
On the other hand, familiarity with a character benefits not only improv, but also traditional scripted drama. While rehearsing for Arsenic and Old Lace, our director Mrs. DeVault had us come up with back-stories for our characters, no matter how minor they were (Actually important here, as their were about 14 characters in total). By having a background, we would know to react as the character if someone missed or slightly changed a line. It's also part of acting as a whole: for that short duration on stage, an actor immerses him or herself in the character.
While I had a good time being the magician for our VBS (even getting a brief appearance in a comic relief moment before the final, super-serious skit for the tenth plague) I didn't get the level of immersion that comes with traditional stage roles. These VBS skits occupy a strange place between improv and scripted theatre. One one hand, we can act however the character would, as long as the main point is brought across. Unlike improv, however, we cannot simply "reinvent" a character or completely change to re-liven a slowing skit. Pharaoh must be Pharaoh, Moses must be Moses.
One of my favorite aspects of being immersed in a show, or character, or series, is being able to imagine what a character would or would not do. Some improv skits, such as "blind date" rely on the audience's familiarity with a character and ask them to figure out his or her identity.
Long story short, repetition makes perfect, as the title says. Or, it at least makes performances complete. It's one thing to utilize your own crazy personality to create improvised comedy. It's another thing entirely to create a full character on the stage.
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