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Santa Monica Playhouse: Activity #1: The Funny Farm

“A total theatre experience!” L.A. TIMES As you will see in many productions - “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast”
are great examples - actors often play animals, or toys, or all kinds of objects.
61 years and counting... Creating the physical and vocal traits for animal characters, aliens, or inanimate
objects, is a task frequently asked of a performer. It’s challenging to do. Let’s
create our own Animal Farm, using a combination of observation and
The magic of live theatre - entertaining, enlightening, educational - is imagination to shape our bodies and our voices into the forms and sounds of our
what Santa Monica Playhouse and its award-winning resident company, favorite animals. This activity can be done with two or more people, and works
Actors' Repertory Theatre (ART), are all about. One of the country's most best with a group of about 6 or 8. Parents will want to participate, too. It’s also a
respected intimate theatrical centers, the Playhouse is the only company great way to flesh out your Halloween character!
of its kind to have produced non-stop for over half a century. Under the
CREATING AN ANIMAL Everyone selects the animal they want to be. Then the
aegis of Chris DeCarlo and Evelyn Rudie, Co-Artistic Directors since group divides in half. One half is the audience, the other half the performers. The
1973, the Playhouse has been honored with over 250 awards and performers stand on the “stage” (living room rug, front of the class, sandy beach,
commendations and has presented 650 dynamic classic, contemporary park, and so forth). They close their eyes, imagining the animal in their minds,
and original productions. seeing every detail - how it looks, how it moves, what it sounds like, what its
particular mannerisms are. Then, still keeping their eyes closed, they form their
The Playhouse is staffed by a small troupe of professional performers
faces and body into the shape of the animal. After a minute, when they feel they
who have made an enormous impact on the local and global community, have created it fully, they open their eyes. Now they to move around, adding
touching the lives of over 5 million local, national and international sounds, and exploring relationships to other ‘animals’ in the group. As they do
audience members, artists and students. With three performance so, the audience tries to guess which animals are represented. When all the
spaces at their jewel of a theatre complex on Fourth Street in the heart of animals have been correctly identified, the audience and performers trade
places and begin again. This can be done several time, each letting participants
Santa Monica, the company brings to brilliant life our rich heritage of
select different animals.
playwrights, from Moliere to Strindberg, from Shakespeare to Sholom
Aleichem. Famed playwright Eugene Ionesco gave the company his ANIMAL PAIRS: Performers pair off. Each selects an animal, but does not tell
highest praise, acclaiming their work “Magnifique!” The Playhouse has anyone else what it is. One pair at a time, the two ‘animals’ interact, with animal
hosted such renowned performers as Paul Linke, Stuart Pankin, Louise sounds only. As each pair interacts, the others try to guess what animals they are
seeing. Do this with each set of participants.
Sorell, William Schallert, Sammy Shore, Renee Taylor, Joe Bologna and
Julie Harris, directors Mark W. Travis and Martin Charnin, and THE ANIMAL FARM: To round off the activity, have each performer tell the group
playwrights Arnold Schulman, Jerry Mayer, Annie Reiner, Brenda Krantz, in two or three sentences what it felt like to be their favorite animal, and explain
Australia's David Williamson and Canada's Michel Garneau. one animal character that they would like to be able to add to their own
personalities (fly like a bird, purr like cat, leap like a frog, and so forth).
With critically acclaimed productions, pioneering advances in
educational theatre, and international tours, this theatrical gem Actors use animal exercises to find out
continues its battle to raise cultural consciousness and fight for the more about the way the body works,
survival and growth of the creative process, reaching out to make live, enhance physical control, and practice
intimate theatre an active force in our community. Co-Artistic Director their sense of perception and memory. They
also create a human character by adding
Chris DeCarlo, a Vietnam veteran, says his experiences convinced him
animal attributes. You can use the animal
that his mandate was to put the human back in humanity. “All of us at the exercise to have fun, and also to better
Playhouse,” he says, “want to make a dramatic difference in our world.” understand your own pets and the animals
you see around you every day.