Learn 13 English IDIOMS from the theatre

Hello.

I'm Gill at engVid, and we have a lesson today on idioms that come from the theatre.

Okay?

So, idioms and metaphors which are used in everyday life, but they come originally from

actors and actresses playing in the theatre on a stage in front of an audience with lighting

and all of that.

So, let's have a look.

So, first of all, before you go on the stage, you're waiting at the side, and the side of

the stage on both sides is called the wings.

It's like a bird with wings.

The two sides are the wings where you can stand and the audience can't see you because

you're hidden behind something, behind a wall, behind a curtain.

So, waiting in the wings is usually when you're just about to go onto the stage to do your

bit of acting, and you're waiting to hear your cue.

If you have a cue, that's the lines you hear another actor say when you know, "Oh, it's

my turn now.

I've got to go on when I hear that."

So, you're waiting in the wings ready to go onto the stage for your appearance.

So, that's the literal meaning from the theatre, but in normal life, people can be said to

be waiting in the wings if they're waiting for an opportunity for something.

So, it may be in a company, in a business, someone is waiting for promotion, but there

isn't a space for them yet.

Maybe they're waiting for somebody to retire, a director or something to retire so they

can move into their place.

So, you could say the manager is waiting in the wings to become a director, which is another

step up.

So, that's waiting in the wings if you're waiting for an opportunity to come where you

can move forward or upwards.

Okay.

Good.

So, and then after you've been waiting in the wings in the theatre, you make an entrance.

You come onto the stage as your character, so making an entrance.

And also, once you've been on stage and you've done your part, you have to get off again,

so you've got to make an exit, entrance, exit.

So, that's literally in the theatre, but in normal everyday life as well, if somebody

makes an entrance into a room, they might do it in a certain way to attract attention

to themselves.

So, if there's a party going on and somebody comes a bit late, but she's someone who likes

to attract attention, so this woman made an entrance at the party and maybe she was talking

loudly or doing something, or the way she walked in was in a very noticeable way, so

making an entrance is drawing attention to yourself, okay?

And also, if you make an exit, you could also do it in quite a noticeable way if you want

to, maybe if you've had an argument with somebody and you want to go in a quite a strong way,

you don't just want to disappear without them noticing.

You might want to slam the door behind you or something, make a lot of noise, bang the

door as you go, making an exit in a dramatic way like in the theatre, okay?

Right.

Next one, in the theatre, if you upstage somebody, what it means is if you're both on stage and

the audience is in front, but one character, one actor is further back, and then there's

another character further forward, but this character further forward needs to look at

this actor behind them, but if they do that, it means they have to turn away from the audience,

which isn't good.

It's never good to turn your back on the audience, but if this actor here at the back, if they're

not prepared to come forward to make life easier for you so that you don't have to turn

right round to look at them, they are upstaging you because upstage is this way, away from

the audience, and downstage is that way, towards the audience, so to upstage someone is to

make them look away from the audience, so it's not a very good thing to do.

It's very difficult for the actor who has to turn round, or if the person at the back

is just doing something very noticeable, the person further forward, the actor near the

front is supposed to be the main focus of the scene, but if this actor at the back is

standing here and doing something very noticeable and drawing attention to themselves, maybe

making a funny face or something, and the audience are looking at this actor instead

of that one, then they're taking attention away from the actor who should have the focus,

so also that means upstaging as well, taking focus away from the person who should have

the attention.

So, in everyday life as well, people can upstage other people by taking attention away from

somebody who should have, who people should be listening to, and they sort of distract

people and take the focus away from that person onto themselves, which is not always a nice

thing to do.

Okay.

So, it's not nice to upstage somebody if it's their turn to speak, and then they get interrupted

or something.

Okay, so next one, a hard act to follow, that was a hard act to follow.

This is in the theatre, if there's a really good actor and the audience love them, and

then they go offstage, another actor comes on, and they think "Oh dear, that actor who's

just been on stage, they were so good, I don't know if I can equal them, I think the audience

could be disappointed by me", that was a hard act to follow.

If you're following an act which was very good, you have to try to equal it, if not

better it, so it's not easy to do, to follow a really good act.

So, in everyday life as well, you could say if someone's giving a presentation, and it

was a really good presentation, and then it's somebody else's turn to do their presentation,

and they might come up and say "Well, that was very interesting, that presentation, that

was a hard act to follow, but I will try to do my best and make this interesting", so

it can be used in that way.

Right, so, break a leg, you might think it's not a very nice thing to say to somebody,

if you don't really want them to break their leg.

But this is what people say to actors when they're about to go on stage, because if you

say "Good luck", if you say "Good luck", actors don't like that, they think it's bad luck

if you say "Good luck", they say "Oh no, no, don't say that, don't say that, no, it will

all go wrong if you say that", they won't even say the words, so don't say "Good luck"

to an actor, you say "Break a leg" instead, so it sort of sounds like bad luck, but if

you say "Break a leg", it will probably not happen, okay?

So that's what people say to actors, "Break a leg", and they say "Thank you", they even

thank you for saying it.

So, in real life, maybe people don't say it so much, unless they know about the theatre

saying, and if someone is about to give a presentation, or they're doing something important,

giving a talk or something, somebody might say "Break a leg", and because people know

that's the sort of meaning that it has, okay, just rub that out, okay, next one, "The show

must go on", there's a thing in the theatre when you try really hard not to let anything

stop you having the show, because the show is the theatre's business, and if the show

doesn't go on, then you may have to give people their money back for their tickets and all

of that, you have to be really strong, and even if you're not feeling well as an actor,

if you have a cold or something, you might have a sore throat, which is a disaster, because

how can you speak your lines if you have a bad throat, but you have to try, so most of

the time, people try really hard to go on, even if they're not feeling 100% well, so

they say "Well, the show must go on", and even if, you know, if there's something wrong

with the building, although there are health and safety things where you can't have the

general public coming in if the building isn't safe, but apart from that, people do say "The

show must go on", people are determined to have the show, it has to be something really

serious to stop a show happening, I mean sometimes there's a power cut, there's no electricity,

so that makes it more or less impossible nowadays to have the show, but normally, if everything's

working, the show must go on, so in everyday life as well, people who are determined to

do something, even with difficulties, if there are difficulties, they say "No, we can't let

that stop us, the show must go on", so they carry on, we've got to carry on and do this,

it shows sort of strength of character and determination, so "de-ter-mi-na-tion", so

okay, and similarly, to get the show on the road, this is often when in the theatre, when

there is a tour, people go on tour, they go to different cities to perform a show, if

it's a very popular show, they may visit different cities and they may spend a week or two in

each city going around the country and then back to London again or wherever they've come

from to do a tour of the show, so you have to get the show on the road, literally, because

you have to take all your costumes and maybe furniture to go on the stage and the set and

everything and of course the actors and all the people who, the crew, the people who do

the sound and the lighting, all the technical things, they have to be there as well, all

the people who do the, you know, the practical things that make the show happen, so you get

the show on the road, it means let's get this going and make it happen, so people use that

in ordinary life as well, just for anything.

If you're having a party, you've got to organize it, you've got to get the food, you have to

invite people, you have to get the show on the road, so anything in business as well,

if you're organizing something, an exhibition, anything like that, a meeting for, a meeting

just for some customers, you've got to get ready for it, you have to get the show on

the road, okay.

Right, so then to steal the show, to steal is to take something that doesn't belong to

you, so it's a crime to steal something.

If you see some money or somebody's purse or wallet, it's a very bad thing to take it

knowing it belongs to somebody else, that's stealing and walking away with it, so to steal

the show in the theater, it's a bit like the upstaging, but it also refers to someone who

is such a good performer, who they just do such a fantastic, brilliant performance that

everybody thinks they're amazing and they do really steal the show because everybody

notices them more than the other performers and that can just happen, you know, a star,

someone who's a star, then they, that's the talent that they have and they're using it

and so they should, so the star of the show, they steal the show because everybody watches

them and is impressed with them, so that's it.

But in everyday life as well, somebody can steal the show by just being more noticeable

and doing something better than their colleagues, if they've done something really good, they've

taken attention away from everybody else and perhaps they deserve that attention if they're

really good at what they do, okay.

Right, so then to be in the limelight, in the theater at one time before electricity,

the lighting used, especially down at the bottom of the, at the stage below the feet

of the performer was some lighting, a bit like we have here, we have some lights that

are shining up from the floor, it was a bit like that but it wasn't electric, it was made

from this stuff called lime, which is a kind of a powdery stuff, I think, which you can,

you can burn it and it creates light, so limelight is lime which is burning and you get a light

from it and that was used in the theater before electricity to create some light to shine

up at the actors from below, okay.

So to be in the limelight means to have a lot of light on you so people notice you but

also it's still used even though theaters don't use lime anymore to light people, they've

got electricity but people still use this term in a metaphorical way to be in the limelight

and it just means somebody who is the center of attention for whatever reason, everybody's

noticing them for something that they're doing, if they're good at something, they're in the

limelight, if they're on television, in films all the time, they're in the limelight, okay.

And so this one is similar as well, to be, we're in the spotlight, a spotlight is a light

usually that shines from above and it's usually a circular light and it shines onto somebody

from hanging from the ceiling usually and they're different colors and so on and they're

pointing from different directions but if you're in the spotlight, again, light is shining

on you, you're the center of attention so that can apply in the theater literally and

also in everyday life if you're in the spotlight, everybody's watching you, everybody's interested

in what you're doing, okay.

This one, to make a song and dance about something, of course in the theater, people sing and

dance, that's part of the performance, you expect it, if you go to a musical show, people

are singing and dancing, that's what you want to see.

In everyday life, people don't do so much singing and dancing because they're just doing

ordinary things but metaphorically, this means if somebody is making a big drama out of something,

they're making it seem more important than it is.

If I don't know, if you're having just a party and you've just got two guests coming, not

a lot of people, just two people coming, so you could just, you know, make the arrangements

and not make a big fuss about it, so it's about making a fuss, making a lot of trouble

about it.

So, if you just maybe you're getting very anxious and you're causing a lot of trouble

about it, instead of just relaxing and getting on with it and just do the few practical things

that you need to do, if you make a song and dance about it, it's a bit annoying, so if

the person you're living with is getting a bit annoyed and thinking you're making too

much of something, they might say, you know, "Can you stop making a song and dance about

it?

This is only two people coming for lunch or something, or for tea, a cup of tea and a

piece of cake."

It doesn't have to be a big, dramatic thing, so that's sort of exaggerating the importance

of something, okay?

And then the last one on this side of the board, if you say it's curtains for somebody,

it's curtains for him or it's curtains for her, in the theatre, of course, you often

have curtains that open and close, which hide what's behind them on the stage, and then

when the show begins, the curtains open, or the curtain rises from below, up like that.

But at the end of the show as well, the curtains close that way, or the curtain comes down

that way, so "curtains" means the end, okay?

So if it's curtains for him in everyday life, it means it's the end for him, either somebody's

job has come to an end, somebody has left or is about to leave, there's no job for them

anymore, something like that, so it's "curtains" for that person, it's the end, okay.

Right, so I hope that's been useful, and I just wanted to end with a little bit of a

quotation from Shakespeare, and you may have seen my other couple of lessons on Shakespeare,

Shakespeare in everyday life, language in everyday life from Shakespeare's plays, and

also we have a lesson on a Shakespeare sonnet, so please look out for those.

So this is just a short quotation from a Shakespeare play, which is called "As You Like It", which

is a comedy, and it comes from Act 2, Scene 7, if you want to look for it, but if you

just Google it, you will find it with the first line, and the person who says these

words is a funny character called Jaques, who is a rather sort of cynical, melancholy,

sad person, so this is his opinion, it doesn't mean it's what Shakespeare thought, it may

be partly what Shakespeare thought, but it's coming from a character who was a little bit

gloomy, a bit sad, a bit pessimistic, so bear that in mind.

So, what Jaques says in the play is "All the world's a stage", so this fits in with the

fact that we have theatrical metaphors which are used in everyday life, all the world's

a stage, and all the men and women merely players, merely means only or just, and players

are actors, people who perform, okay?

They have their exits and their entrances, they go out and they come back, they appear,

they disappear, they come and go, they have their exits and their entrances, and one man

in his time plays many parts, so one man in his lifetime, that is, the length of his life,

plays, like an actor, many parts, different characters, his acts being seven ages, so

according to Jaques, he's thinking of a man starting off as a baby, and then as he grows

up he becomes a schoolboy, going to school, and then he falls in love, he becomes a lover,

he might write love poetry to somebody, then he becomes a soldier, perhaps, and then as

he gets older he becomes a justice, which is like a judge, a legal person who decides

on criminal cases and so on, so he becomes a professional legal person, then he uses

this word pantaloon, which just means a silly old man that you just laugh at because he's

become a little bit foolish as he's got older, and then finally a very old man who's only

just alive still, so that's Jaques being a rather pessimistic person and saying, you

know, how sad it is, people get old and then that's it, and that's their life, it's just

divided up into possibly seven different roles or characters that they play, so that's a

metaphor like this, really, in reverse, using the theatre as a metaphor for everyday life

and people having roles and characters to play, so I hope that's been interesting for

you and introduced you to some new vocabulary as well and some idioms that you could use

yourself, so if you'd like to go to the website, www.engvid.com, there's a quiz on this subject

and thank you for watching and hope to see you again soon, okay, bye for now, bye.