CAMELOT Theatrical Special Effects

Unless you're performing Shakespeare or a Greek tragicomedy, there's probably a telephone in your show.

Why do playwrights love the telephone so much? Because it's such an easy plot device to deliver the news that changes everything to a character without having to add a minor role (usually the messenger) and clunk up the action with some poor guy who just sits around for an hour backstage waiting for his big (only) line. It's also a universally-recognized appliance, needs no explanation, fits any set (except maybe a forest) and is easy to scrounge.

That being said (I just said it!): Why do directors have so much trouble working the telephone into their shows? There seems to be a mindset among directors that takes them back to their first high-school play and keeps them there: "That's how Mrs. Farbelwitz did it so that's the way I've always done it." The curtain goes up, there's the living room, the audience sees a telephone sitting on an end table next to the sofa, then suddenly in Scene 4 the auditorium ceiling rings or there's a ding-a-ling offstage and the actor answers the phone! What's that all about?

Violation of Expectation is a negative principle in theatre. The telephone is a special effect, not a prop. The audience expects a telephone to ring. How hard is that? Well, actually, it's pretty tricky and those directors that don't call their special effects wizard in to set up the gag are the reason that so many school and community theatre productions still bear the stamp of Mrs. Farbelwitz after all these years.

My upcoming book has an entire chapter devoted to the telephone: the styles of each period, where to get them for free (or very cheap) and oodles of ways to make them ring that Mrs. Farbelwitz and most directors never imagined. I'll just limit this post to the current show that I'm working on and how I worked the gag.

The show, "See How They Run," is set in England during WWII and the phone required is a "candlestick" variety which, in the 21st century, is not that easy to come by, or so you might think. While I usually raid my local phone companies for my supply (I have shelves full now), the candlesticks have all been snapped up by antique dealers and are valuable collectors' items. I went directly to eBay where I found lots of them in the 200-dollar range and up. But there, sitting all by itself, was a "candlestick telephone AM radio" for four dollars... and no bidders! Why not? Well, it was a plastic replica (perfect in every detail) so it was of no interest to an antique collector. It had an AM radio built into the base. Who wants a bad AM radio? Who even wants a radio? I snapped the thing up for four bucks and it arrived two days later.

The AM radio board went directly into the trash. I replaced the cheap plastic "springy cord" to the handset with black woven cord from the fabric shop (actually more authentic; candlesticks didn't have "springy cords") and there it was. Well, not quite.

My Mrs. Farbelwitz touch the last few years has been to add a radio-controlled ringer to my phones. (I came up with this for a production of "Noises Off" in which the phone is a running gag: it gets thrown through a window, the receiver gets ripped off and yet, in the last scene, it still rings in the actor's hand.) While it sounds high-tech, it couldn't be simpler: the radio transmitter and receiver came from a cheap toy car from the Radio Shack "Christmas close-out" table (ten bucks) and the ringer is a doorbell from the hardware store. Push the button anywhere within 100 feet of the phone and it rings. That eliminates any kind of wiring on stage or any positioning problems; all the cords are just black nylon rope and the whole gag is self-contained and operated by the Stage Manager at the appropriate times. When this show is over, that baby goes right into Camelot inventory and will be available for rental... or you can wait for my book and build your own!

posted by C. J. # 11:13 AM