Honey, I Love You but I Just Can’t Smile

This is a focusing exercise designed to help students hone their stage skills, specifically to help them build their ability to resist giggling during rehearsals and performances.

Two students begin: one will be the clown, the other will be the resister.

For a prescribed amount of time (usually up to a minute, but sometimes smaller amounts of time, especially at the beginning) the clown tries to make the resister “break” their concentration and smile or laugh.  The clown has one rule: DO NOT TOUCH THE OTHER PERSON (read: do not tickle!).

The resister’s job is to resist any reaction to the clown’s efforts (be it telling jokes, engaging in physical humor or any combination of the two).  If the resister is able to accomplish this for the full amount of time, she is then asked to turn and look at the clown, look him in the eyes and tell him “Honey, I love you but I just can’t smile.”

Through this activity actors strengthen their concentration skills and deepen their ability to focus in potentially distracting situations.  As there are often very humorous moments on the stage where a character is required to remain unmoved but the actor is highly aware of funny things happening around him, it helps to practice these concentration skills.