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May 6

Theatre jargon

I apologize in advance, but my understanding of old slang is not very good, and there's a lot of it in the literature. I am reading up on the cultural history of the Beat generation by John Arthur Maynard and this passage of his bothers me because it refers to old theatre jargon that I'm not familiar with at all. The context is the anti-consumerist lifestance of the so-called beatnik. Here's a sample with the problematic term in added bold:

The gates slammed hard on the Venice beats. It was one thing to harbor strange ideas; it was another, in the language of the theater, to "kid the show." In Southern California, the show was economic growth—and the unquestioning belief in its goodness.

I've never heard "kid the show" before. What does this mean and what does it refer to and what are its origins? Viriditas (talk) 22:55, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Don't kid the show. For maximum effect, the play should be acted completely straight, as if the cast were performing a serious drama. Nothing spoils a stage romp more than having the actors 'kid' a script that is farcical to begin with. Let the laughs come from the audience, not the cast" DuncanHill (talk) 23:27, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. The Venice beatniks, who worked to live, not lived to work, and had "contempt for middle-class people and their values", embraced voluntary poverty and opposed materialism, were "kidding the show" of capitalism? It's just a bit confusing. Viriditas (talk) 23:36, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity I asked Perplexity AI to explain; in summary:

So in essence, "kidding the show" means a producer ceding creative control to the writers, composers, director or other key creatives, rather than micromanaging the artistic process. It suggests a producer who trusts the talent they've assembled to make the best creative decisions for the production.

In this context, I'd assume it relates to making something up on the spot, or about slightly changing the way something is said to influence how it's understood.

--136.54.106.120 (talk) 02:39, 7 May 2024 (UTC) -- P.s. link to perplexity.ai was not allowed[reply]

Acting straight when the situation in the play is funny for the audience is also the sense implied here. --Lambiam 07:06, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't read that, but "acting straight when the situation in the play is funny" is the opposite of the sense of the text I linked. DuncanHill (talk) 08:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, the sense in the article is the same, but I misrepresented it. The article, "Making you Laugh is no Joke" by Otto Harbach in the issue of Collier's of October 9, 1926, has a section entitled "No Fun in Kidding the Show" that argues, by example, that the comedic humor lies in the portrayed characters not realizing themselves that they, in the situation, are funny. "If Miss Vokes had winked or looked wise when she said this, there would have been no laugh. What made it so funny was her air of not realizing she was letting the cat out of the bag. If a comedian laughs at his part, the audience doesn’t." --Lambiam 06:08, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I've heard the phrase "kidding the show" before, but I've come across complaints that actors who try to play The Importance of Being Earnest in an overtly mugging or humorous way are kind of missing the point of the play -- it's better to say the ridiculous lines with apparent solemnity, and let the humor emerge that way... AnonMoos (talk) 10:43, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's odd to me that Theatrecrafts.com, which contains a comprehensive glossary of technical theatre terms and expressions, doesn't include it. Viriditas (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, if an actor laughs during a performance (when the character isn't supposed to laugh), or deliberately causes another actor to do so, it's called corpsing. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:07, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary defines the term as, "(intransitive, slang, of an actor) To laugh uncontrollably during a performance." Of the three quotations given, the second actually seems to mean "to freeze", like Mitch McConnell when asked whether he will run for re-election.^[1] --Lambiam 07:19, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]