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Those Thrilling Days of Irma and Riley
Two Sundays ago I performed in a live reading of two radio shows. I had speaking roles in both, but the one was small enough that I ended up doing SFX - I was on door duty. Every few seconds I was either knocking that prop door, rattling it open, or loudly slamming it. It was terrific fun.
These shows are run by a couple of friends of mine who are self-employed actors who do a lot of voiceover work and commercials. They're high energy, most of the time, and lots of fun. I stood up at their wedding about 6 years ago, surprising them at the rehearsal dinner with a 4 part harmony of "Be My Baby Bumblebee" with 3 of the 4 other bridesmaids. They're also the duo that got me involved in subtitle reading for the Chicago International Children's Film Festival - except that this year, they snapped up so many of the slots that by the time the organizer got to me (I've become the 4th on the list to call, in terms of preference), there was nothing left! Bastards. :)
Anyway, for this show we did two scripts - an episode of My Friend Irma from 1953, where roommates Irma and Jane are haunted on Tuesday nights by a mysterious sneaking ghost in a white sheet, and then an episode of The Life of Riley (also from 1953), where Riley is coerced by his son Junior to check out the house down the street on Hallowe'en night, to prove that it's not actually haunted by a ghost. In the former, I got to slam the door for Irma, Jane, Maestro, Al, and the landlady. In the latter, I was the aforementioned ghost.
The shows are fun - we perform them standing at microphones with our scripts held in front of us, the audience sitting on chairs on the main floor of a small ballroom. We generally have live piano accompaniment for incidental music as well as assistance on the commercials we do, including one for this show, for Pepsodent Toothpaste.
I'm not able to do the typical American actor 'accent' for the 1950's, but I do like to think I have the tone and feel of it down. It's a particularly careful and precious sort of way of speaking, heightening to ridiculous and yet charming proportions when emotions and pacing are brought into the mix. What I really loved was hearing Ben read the sponsor messages for Riley, talking about meat as America's mainstay of protein food - and protein being pronounced as "pro - tee - inn."
Overall, it went well - we had a fairly full audience, some kids in Hallowe'en costumes, even, and many good, solid laughs. A fun time.
I managed to soak in it, Madge, by going to Mt. Carmel cemetery before and after the performance to complete a small favor for Last Call Poker. I saw no ghosts, however.
These shows are run by a couple of friends of mine who are self-employed actors who do a lot of voiceover work and commercials. They're high energy, most of the time, and lots of fun. I stood up at their wedding about 6 years ago, surprising them at the rehearsal dinner with a 4 part harmony of "Be My Baby Bumblebee" with 3 of the 4 other bridesmaids. They're also the duo that got me involved in subtitle reading for the Chicago International Children's Film Festival - except that this year, they snapped up so many of the slots that by the time the organizer got to me (I've become the 4th on the list to call, in terms of preference), there was nothing left! Bastards. :)
Anyway, for this show we did two scripts - an episode of My Friend Irma from 1953, where roommates Irma and Jane are haunted on Tuesday nights by a mysterious sneaking ghost in a white sheet, and then an episode of The Life of Riley (also from 1953), where Riley is coerced by his son Junior to check out the house down the street on Hallowe'en night, to prove that it's not actually haunted by a ghost. In the former, I got to slam the door for Irma, Jane, Maestro, Al, and the landlady. In the latter, I was the aforementioned ghost.
The shows are fun - we perform them standing at microphones with our scripts held in front of us, the audience sitting on chairs on the main floor of a small ballroom. We generally have live piano accompaniment for incidental music as well as assistance on the commercials we do, including one for this show, for Pepsodent Toothpaste.
I'm not able to do the typical American actor 'accent' for the 1950's, but I do like to think I have the tone and feel of it down. It's a particularly careful and precious sort of way of speaking, heightening to ridiculous and yet charming proportions when emotions and pacing are brought into the mix. What I really loved was hearing Ben read the sponsor messages for Riley, talking about meat as America's mainstay of protein food - and protein being pronounced as "pro - tee - inn."
Overall, it went well - we had a fairly full audience, some kids in Hallowe'en costumes, even, and many good, solid laughs. A fun time.
I managed to soak in it, Madge, by going to Mt. Carmel cemetery before and after the performance to complete a small favor for Last Call Poker. I saw no ghosts, however.
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That's one of the things that makes the early part of the twentieth century seem like such a mysterious place, at the same time sinister and ridiculous. Surely not everyone talked that way back then, so didn't people realize how dorky the actors sounded? I guess they did, but it took them several decades.
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