Perhaps you’re a fan of hams. Not talking about the stuff of sandwiches, which are just fine, but of the acting variety, like Jon Lovitz’ Master Thespian.
Hamminess is the sort of thing that performing arts teachers strive to purge from aspiring actors. That’s to be expected when one wishes to be “serious” about being on stage or screen. But children are inclined to histrionics as a matter of course, so acting teachers are on a mission to crush the creativity of youth! (See, that exclamation point is the punctuation version of overacting.)
Maybe you can blame the glut of kiddie fare on YouTube and the Disney Channel and countless other outlets for making it OK to lay it on thick. But don’t blame modern pop culture. Exaggeration has long been the norm. I have it on no authority whatsoever that little Willie Shakespeare would run around the house hollering “Fie, knave! Here I stabbeth thee!” Not bad for a kid, but he did improve his writing skills while finding all manner of ways to off scores of his characters.
This is all to encourage grandparents to allow their young descendants to go ahead and overplay to their heart’s content. I’m doing my part. The three-year-old likes a particular picture book and has developed her own shtick.
“I found something,” she announces. And then she makes like she’s concentrating mightily and moves her hands over the pictures and then declares, “It’s nothing!”
I will then react with maximum astonishment and say, “Wait! What do you mean? You just said you found something, so you have to tell me what it is!”
Barely suppressing giggles, she points and says, “OK, it’s this train.”
And then we repeat this routine, varying only the particular object that amuses her. Although — and this continues to be part of the bit — she’ll deliberately misidentify the object. So we carry on with this part-scripted and part-improv exercise. We both laugh a lot.
The 10-year-old is operating at a higher level, naturally. We’ve sent her to the Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s summer camps where she gets to swordfight with swim noodles, learn how to fall (dramatically), and declaim with words like forsooth and grievous (not the Star Wars baddie).
And there are few things quite as satisfying to this old ham as hearing his granddaughter intone: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on …”
I love the idea of getting them started in the field. I don’t care if they go on to win an Academy Award, although it would be nice to be thanked. They are learning expression and how to understand how and why people do things. But they also gain an understanding of how to be part of a team, and maybe they’ll take an interest in building sets or designing costumes or doing sound. Maybe they’ll want to become a stage manager, meaning they’ll learn how to think fast, solve problems quickly, and get things done. (The world needs more stage managers).
Whether they’re part of the cast or part of the crew, they’ll learn about stories and storytelling and history and so much of what literature can reveal to us.
And forsooth! They won’t need to be on their devices so much!!