Now in this clip we're going to talk about the importance of props and activities. Now in general, when people walk into a room and start a discussion, they don't walk in and just stand there. They're doing an activity. And it can be eating, drinking, watering a plant, listening to music, turning on the news, all sorts of different activities. And people do multiple activities too. If you know kids that can, they can text message, be on a cell phone call, turn on their music, be watching TV, and of course be doing their homework all at the same time. It's pretty amazing, but that is life today. So I have my example of the elderly couple who sit there and do nothing all day but watch TV, and they are growing further and further apart from one another and maybe they'll eat and drink during the day, but what if we give them more to do? We give the man a jigsaw puzzle so that he can work on that during the day and sometimes he might be frustrated putting those puzzle pieces together. And sometimes it will work effortlessly. And for his wife, maybe she'll be knitting, and when they get in an argument, she'll probably knit harder with those knitting needles and whack them together like they're little swords or something. So the characters can see things like this, the use of props and really make use and it will help enhance their character. Now props can be incidental or they can be very important to the play. In my play, Color my Heart, it opens with the teenage daughter writing a letter to the boy at school she's secretly in love with and it's just a simple letter, it's nothing special about it, but then later on we find that this boy has read the letter and is making fun of her for having even written it. So that letter actually does have a lot of impact. And something as simple too is there's a strip of trim along the back wall that's sort of popped out from the wall, and one of the running gags is that Margaret is constantly on Uncle Ray to fix that trim. And he'll come over to fix it and not have the right tools, so he has to go away and come back later. And then he'll have all the right tools, and he gets another interruption, so during the whole play, he's so busy trying to get to that trim, but he never quite gets to it. Now there's certain personal props, like for instance, a pen, which may be so incidental it's just for this character to get out and sign something. Or it might be a little more important. He might be an insurance salesman, and part of his quirk is that as he's selling people, he's constantly clicking that pen and you want to be careful not to overwrite that. You might write in the character description that he has this nervous thing about clicking this pen all the time and another thing is a writer with a pipe. Maybe this writer has a pipe and he can only write when he's got this pipe in his mouth. Never lights it, but he always has this prop in his mouth. There's the famous play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, in which Captain Queeg was on trial and he was on the edge of sanity anyway and he always carried around three marbles and just slowly worked them. And as he got more and more frustrated he worked them harder and harder and that became really such a part of that very unique character. Of course, you can do an activity without props too. I had a character who was an office manager who was always pantomiming a golf swing. And it just sort of showed that he would rather be away from that office and on the golf course at all times. You can take and activity as simple as drinking coffee, and it can greatly enhance the scene, depending on how the character uses it. So for instance, I can have my coffee here, and I am the boss who has just brought a subordinate in, and I am just about to give him a bad review. So I might be sort of smug here and swirl my coffee around and 'Wow, you know it really breaks my heart to give you a terrible review. But I've got to tell you a few things. So that can help. Sometimes a proper activity can help create the whole character for an actor. I might be just sipping coffee here because I'm tired, and I really don't like the taste of it. I'm just trying to stay awake. What reason is the character doing this activity? So remember, our world is getting busier and busier and more and more fast paced, so be sure to reflect that in your play. And one way to do it is through props and activities.
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